


27 Years Bad Luck

by roseveare



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: Case Fic, Dubious Consent, F/M, M/M, Multi, Rape/Non-con Elements, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-09-09
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 36,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3367652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/pseuds/roseveare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's like one of those <i>Star Trek</i> episodes where everyone's suddenly evil and bi." Evil duplicates run amok in Haven, threatening the friendships between Audrey, Duke and Nathan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set after Magic Hour part 2.  
> This was actually written back in the season 3 hiatus nearly two years ago, although I've tried to bring it in line with characterisation through seasons 4 and 5 as much as possible.  
> THANKS: to Darkmagess, Kattahj, Elegant_Soul and Miah_Arthur for beta input at various points throughout the editing process.

The message from Dwight had said, _Be here as soon as possible. Just you_. Nathan hadn't thought twice about responding to it. Or at least, he'd thought _crap_ , because it meant there was a new situation, and serial killers in Haven and the fact he'd been dead last week were already enough to deal with. 

He stepped into the antique store, keeping a lookout for Dwight, but the store seemed empty and his eyes were drawn to the open till. Instinct said _turned over_ , and he responded by unclipping and drawing his gun, scanning his surroundings warily as he crossed the room to investigate. 

Movement startled him... but it was only himself, reflected in a mirror. The small store had entirely too many reflective surfaces, the light catching off old bottles, elaborate silverwork and gilt candelabras, aping movement in the corners of his eyes. As he rounded the counter, he saw a foot and then all of Marion, lying on the floor with her face pale and eyes shut, although she seemed to be breathing. There was a shattered antique mirror right behind her but she hadn't been cut. He knelt beside her, keeping his back against the counter and his eyes up inasmuch as was possible. Finding nothing that required immediate first aid, he grabbed his radio. "Laverne? Get me an ambulance up to Marion's store. She's unconscious and I can't see the injury. I'm going to check around further."

Her warning to take care cut short as he stuffed the radio away. He rose, eyes still scanning the room. With reluctance, he stepped away from Marion. The last thing anyone needed was for Marion Caldwell to be unduly stressed again -- Haven could do without another rash of crazy weather. But Nathan's instincts were doing all sorts of unpleasant pinging and he needed the area clear before the ambulance arrived.

"Dwight?" Nathan yelled. Dwight should have been there to meet him and wouldn't have left Marion like that, unattended. Unease was already gathering strongly when he spied a bulky form sprawled in the corner of the store. All he could see between the curios was a lump of dark clothing, but a body that size seriously limited who it could be. " _Dwight_! Damn it..." 

Marion had recently rearranged and he had to negotiate through two narrow aisles around packed tables to get near to the big guy. When he could, Nathan knelt again and hauled on Dwight's shoulder, rolling him over with effort. Like Marion he was pale, quiet, and completely out, yet hadn't a visible mark on him. Anything that could take down Dwight, Nathan didn't want to meet, and no matter what secret, strange thing Dwight had brought him there to share, he needed back-up. Working one-handed, he pulled out his phone to call Parker.

Then, _Dwight_... stepped from behind a full-length standing mirror, almost close enough to touch.

Nathan's thumb froze on the buttons. He could hear his heart thudding in his chest as he glanced down slowly at the body at his feet -- definitely Dwight -- and back up. Also-Dwight looming over him tipped a nod and gave that pensive, mixed smile. Only... there was something behind his eyes that looked harder than usual, and almost… almost _gleeful_ , or even outright nasty. "Chief. Guess you're wondering why I called you here." He took a step, marking Nathan's drawn gun, and toed the still form on the floor. "Don't worry about him. He's out of it. I checked."

"Don't _worry_ about him?" Nathan echoed. He awkwardly stuffed the phone back in his pocket. He was nowhere near ready yet to relinquish the gun. This was Dwight in front of him, no question, but until this Dwight delivered a satisfactory explanation as to why there were two of him and what else this was aside from something that at least looked like a robbery, he wasn't ruling him out as a threat. "Dwight, _what_ is going on?" Even if this was the real deal, Nathan surely wasn't in the mood for the usual evasive non-explanations and curt, cryptic answers. He was just about managing to keep the gun a few inches shy of actually aimed at the other man, but it took an effort of will and nerve to do it. 

Aim wouldn't make much difference, given Dwight's bullet-attracting Trouble, he allowed. It didn't make him feel better. He uncurled himself warily from the floor, watching also-Dwight every second of the way.

In exchange, he still got crypticness, and not even an answer. Also-Dwight nodded at the floor and observed, "It's something to see, your own body laid out like that. Hey, this is weird--" He dipped down as if to examine something and Nathan's attention could do nothing but follow. 

Dwight came back up fast. Nathan almost didn't see the punch, and didn't feel it land, but he was suddenly on the floor several feet away from where he'd been. "Dwight! What the _hell_?!" He scrambled for the gun, which had travelled a few feet further than he had, and hurried to stand, blinking away disorientation. He stumbled backward as Dwight took a threatening step closer.

"The old Chief? I liked him. Weren't best buds, but he knew what he was doing, and I could respect that. You?" Dwight jabbed a finger in his direction. "I am sick and tired of having to take orders from _you_."

"Orders from--" Nathan's words choked off. "Wait, is this about _yesterday_?"

Yesterday's Trouble had been at the sports centre. He could wish all their Troubles were as low key as a bit of match fixing and illicit betting.

"Not in the job five minutes and you already think you know better than I do," Dwight said.

"I'm... tired of covering up crimes because the perp's Troubled. This time, I didn't see the need for it." It didn't matter how Wassell had done it, he _did_ it and they could press charges just fine. His weird capacity with predicting odds and numbers could help him pass the time in his jail cell. In fact, Nathan remembered the total of that conversation with Dwight as a covert shake of his head and a low, " _It's fine_." Dwight had looked around, his expression as closed-off as ever, then he'd backed off without a word. "Look, Dwight, I'm sorry if you took it that way. I didn't mean--"

"Oh, please," the big guy sneered. "If this is the way it's got to be, 'Chief', at least quit pussying around and have some conviction!" He slammed his arm through the items on the table near him and loped forward while things fell and shattered. "I never heard the old man apologise _or_ back down. Of course, you were never his _real_ flesh and blood."

The accusation stung hard, but Nathan hadn't wanted to be like the Chief when his dad was alive and that hadn't changed just because he was dead. The rest, though -- he'd been shaky for a while, he'd admit, but had _thought_ he'd been getting the hang of things, gaining the trust of those around him. He hadn't realised that Dwight--

 _No, not Dwight_ , he thought, eying the bulky unconscious form. But then, this guy knew about the sports centre, he had Dwight's _memories_. Whatever _this_ was, it was more than just a guy who superficially looked and sounded like Dwight. Nathan swallowed and gauged his chances at vaulting the counter to get away from the slab of muscle coming at him. Apparently Duke had gone toe-to-toe with Dwight, only a few weeks ago, but Nathan found it hard to believe. Trying struck him as fairly suicidal. He had one personal bonus -- he wouldn't feel it when all his bones were snapped like twigs.

"Dwight, what's happened? This _isn't_ you." Getting behind the counter would put him too close to Marion. He couldn't endanger her further, nor corner himself. Nothing else in this place offered convincing cover, and there were too many sharp and breakable hurdles on the way to the door. "You help the Troubled. You keep Haven together. Like Audrey. Like _me_. If you have a problem, we can talk it over."

"Keep Haven together?" Dwight bared his teeth and kept coming. "Let me _talk over_ what Haven did for me...!" It was like a building eruption. Dwight was big, but he was a trained soldier. He didn't rage like this, out of control, beyond all reason. With urgent incentive, Nathan lined up his gun with Dwight's chest. The other man's pause was immediate, but he could see from Dwight's twitchy, testing moves that it wouldn't be lasting. Nathan looked from what might only be a violent copy of Dwight to the presumably real one on the floor. 

If he fired, where would the bullets go?

 _Crap_. What were a few punches he wouldn't even feel weighed against a man's life? 

He put the gun on the counter and held up his hands. "Alright. You want to land a few, fine. Work it out of your system."

Dwight looked nonplussed for a moment, then tipped his head into his shoulder in a lopsided shrug. "Okay." he grunted, and lunged to grab Nathan's collar. 

_...Hell_. Not that he was going to feel it, but someday, someone was going to do damage significant enough to stick around till he could feel it again, and Dwight was as likely a candidate for that as anyone.

Dwight didn't play fair either. Where Nathan had expected a punch, he got dragged through everything spiky, splintery and breakable on the nearest table before being slung through the air. The world seemed to slow down mid-flight into a lazy spiral of shifting viewpoint. Then his own face surged towards him, surreally -- the big mirror, the one the unconscious Dwight was lying next to. This was going to be messy.

He made an instinctive attempt to protect his face, causing his arms to lead the smash into the glass. His vision fragmented into a crazy burst of myriad reflections in the instant before he remembered to screw shut his eyes. By the muffled sound of the impact, his landing was less heavy than expected. Dwight. Right. And the _other_ Dwight--

One thing about his Trouble: no downtime for pain. A long, pointed glass shard from the broken mirror caught his eye, and Nathan curled his fingers around it, taking a grip that seeped blood. He struggled as far as his knees, clutching the improvised weapon.

"Might not be able to _shoot_ ," he muttered. As the guy he was fairly sure wasn't Dwight closed in behind him, a hundred tiny Dwights reflected exactly where he was and what he did. Nathan gauged his moment and whipped around to jab the shard of mirror into a tree trunk of a leg, just above the knee. It sunk in and stuck. Nathan could feel the ghost of pressure moving against him as splitting muscle resisted beneath his weight, and then no resistance at all. The mirror shard slashed down into the polished floorboards and slipped from his confused grip as he barely avoided landing on his face in the sea of glass splinters. 

He jerked back into a crouch and stared around. The only Dwight to be seen was the one unconscious next to him. Okay... he'd expected a manly howl and possibly a drop to one knee, but disappearing worked.

"Dwight." Nathan shook the still body, smearing the man's black shirt with darker blood, but Dwight remained unresponsive. Nathan frowned at the blood smear, and took inventory of the labyrinth of scratches on his hands and arms, his mind filling with curses. He took out his radio and was just discovering it had been broken in the impact when the ambulance pulled up outside.

***

Parker was waiting for him when he came out after the MRI. Funny thing was, so was Duke, and he couldn't remember calling _him_. Duke looked like he'd been several days at sea and hadn't cleaned up since getting back. His long hair was tangled and his overstretched knitwear even more shapeless than usual, and grubby to boot. 

Catching his narrow-eyed look of question, Duke said, "I heard Dwight tried to turn you into paste. Did that happen for real, or was that just a dream?" The smile he offered Nathan was crooked -- a good match to the rest of him.

"Wasn't Dwight," Nathan said curtly. "Could've been his evil twin." They were getting along better again lately, though that could just be not having seen each other in a week. But almost -- no, _actually_ dying had put a few things in perspective, and he'd even heard some apocryphal tale about Duke freaking out over his demise. He'd stopped trying to capitalize on that after his first few comments fell flat. Apparently it was serious business. The idea sent a shiver down his spine that was entirely psychosomatic. Who knew, maybe Duke really did give a damn after all? Maybe he didn't only pursue this on-off friendship to get his parking tickets fixed and have someone around with the badge-waving power to make his other problems disappear.

"An evil twin Trouble?" Parker asked. "We had that one already, I remember it clearly -- strangely, you managed to get yourself hospitalized then, too. But the twin wasn't really the evil one, that time."

"All I know is there were two Dwights, and one of them was bearing a grudge and several kinds of hell to put down. I'm hoping the other one wakes up in a more forgiving mood and can maybe explain what the hell happened before I got on the scene." 

"I haven't heard about Dwight, but how about Marion?" Parker suggested. "The doctors said she woke up, just a few minutes before you came out."

"Sounds like a plan." Nathan turned, but unsure of the way cast back for Parker to field him in the right direction, and Duke caught his arm.

"Back up to the part where between you and Sasquatch, you won. Which crazy parallel universe did that happen in, again?"

"Screw you, Duke." He just about managed to pull out enough of a false smile to soften that, noticing how something in Duke's expression didn't tally with his jocular tone. "Guy vanished as soon as I drew blood."

"Funny, something like that turned the tables for me, too." Duke trailed his eyes over Nathan in a critical scan. "Wouldn't trade."

"Assuming we haven't seen the last of this -- and eight hundred dollars missing from Marion's till says someone made a profit from it -- we need to figure out what that means," Parker said. "But first..." She tapped Nathan's arm very softly on the edge of one of the dressings, where the largest gash had nearly bisected the tattoo. The whisper of sensation barely stirred his sleeping pain receptors to the damage, but he probably wouldn't have complained. "How are you? Doctor DeRoss said it was all superficial, but you look like a human jigsaw puzzle to me. You sure you're up to working?"

Nathan shrugged. He couldn't feel the damage, but it looked particularly bad because most of it was on his exposed skin. There was a heaviness in him, the sluggishness that affected normal movement when he was injured, the mental haze that came with blood loss, and he could sense enough to know his body wasn't running at full efficiency, but he could function. "I'm alright. Cuts. Lots of cuts. A few bruised ribs. Lucky."

" _Lucky_?" She gave him a disbelieving scowl.

"Dwight." He figured it was a point worth emphasizing. "Plus, I was dead last week, so I'd say things are looking up."

"Right, man." Duke snorted and thumped his shoulder in that too-energetic way he had -- Nathan figured it for masquerading a chance to leave a bruise as a friendly gesture. For some reason Parker had never caught onto that, so instead of calling Duke on it she smiled and placed her hands on both their shoulders, shepherding them down the corridor with a bright affection she hadn't displayed in a while. Nathan caught Duke's eye, a warning glance that lingered a bit too long for its intended purpose, but without rancour. Then Audrey's arm brushed the side of his neck and he dragged his gaze aside, falling into the rare touch, opting just to enjoy the sensation breaking through the gloom.

***

Marion Caldwell sat in bed looking pale and dazed, in a small, bright room with a large window overlooking the gardens. She greeted them fairly warmly, given the circumstances. "Hey, Nathan. I heard you helped me out again. Audrey." She nodded at her, then looked curiously at Duke, perhaps having the good fortune never to have been introduced. Nathan wasn't going to be the one to spoil that, but Parker opted to do so anyway. 

"Marion." Nathan shuffled around the bed. "How are you doing?" Parker, smiling brightly, ducked in at his side. Duke wasn't usually so reticent around strange women's bedrooms, but this time he hung near the door. Nathan's thoughts to keep Duke away from Marion were fleeting. Recent events had reconciled him a bit more to Duke's Trouble and the fact that Duke was dealing with his Trouble. Nathan settled for just keeping half an eye on him. 

"I'm... okay." Marion drew the word out in a sigh. "Really. I'm more frustrated about losing that money. I know it's not much, but it doesn't seem like I can keep my finances out of the hands of crooks."

Parker said, "That's sort of why we're here."

"Need to know what happened in the shop," Nathan said. "I found the till open, you and Dwight unconscious, and some pretty weird things going on."

"In the shop..." Her forehead pinched, and she ventured hesitantly, "I was talking to Dwight." Her sombre, dark eyes misted with confusion. A heavy rain shower lashed at the window behind them, interrupting the dry day without warning. They tried to politely ignore it. "There was a customer. I went to the counter... that's as much as I remember. I'm sorry. I really don't know what happened."

"Who was the customer?" Parker asked, and at Marion's helpless shrug, pressed, "What were they like? Male or female?"

"I... don't know. Young. Wearing black. I'm sorry, I really only remember seeing them from behind." The rain whipped heavier against the glass, and they could all hear the wind picking up. "I wish I could tell you something to help catch them. I can't believe this happened again! It makes me so _angry_... Maybe Dwight can tell you more."

"We'll ask. Don't worry." Parker patted her hand and carefully didn't look out of the window. "Is Conrad on his way here, now?"

She nodded. "The doctors want to do some blood tests to find out why I passed out, but they said after that I should be able to go home."

There might've been a few rays of sunshine starting to break up the clouds as the three of them filed out of the room. Marion sat and stared out of the window with her small chin very straight and a pensiveness to her expression.

Dwight, as it happened, was already looking for them, and they ran into him stomping the corridors, glowering, unhappy, and still a bit pale. His grimace intensified when he caught sight of Nathan. He slowed in the inexorable manner of a train coming in to a station, but he did stop at a moderately safe distance of a few feet. From there, his gaze swept Nathan up and down. "Heard I gave you some trouble."

"Not you..." Nathan hazarded warily. "Unless you're feeling any lingering urges to land one on me?" Dwight's expression only darkened, unhelpful in terms of providing reassurance. Nathan ventured, "Exact replica, worse temper. Disappeared when I stabbed him with a broken mirror shard. Know anything about that?"

"When Marion fell," the big guy said slowly, "for a moment, I saw two Marions. The other one overbalanced on the mirror behind the counter. Broke it to pieces. Then she was gone. Then that kid looked at me, and that's the last I remember."

"Kid?"

"Five four, dark hair, make-up. Goth brat. Could've been a boy or a girl, could've been fifteen or twenty-five, under all that. No kid when you got there, huh?"

"No, but I think we found the source of our Trouble."

Dwight gave a grunt and a nod. He didn't look greatly happier. 

"You..." Nathan frowned. Pronouns were about to get annoying. "You were unconscious when I got there. Did you call me? Or was that the other one?"

"Quiet morning. _Was_ , anyway," Dwight said, shaking his head. "Just passing the time of day with Marion. I -- he _called_ you?" He pulled out a cell phone and checked it, holding it up to show a call log that backed up his confusion.

Nathan nodded slowly. "So he called. He had, well, your clothes. Same ones you're wearing now. Probably had that phone, too. He implied there was something going on I needed to see."

"Which it turned out there was," Parker said. 

"Aside from a close-up of Dwight's fist, obviously," Duke put in. 

"... _Two_ duplicates," Parker said firmly. "Of Dwight and Marion, both of whom ended up unconscious in the bargain. We also know the copy of Dwight was feeling pretty homicidal."

"More like... an impulse control issue." Nathan looked uncertainly at Dwight as he chewed that thought over, trying to remember their short but unpleasantly informative conversation. "You -- he was all over the place, grinning one moment, enraged the next. But," he swallowed and put an extra step between himself and the big guy, then grew annoyed after realising he'd done it, "he was still _Dwight_. He knew too much about working with the Chief. Working with me." 

Dwight met that statement with a slow-blinking, cagey gaze.

Nathan lowered his chin to return a single subtle nod. All right. So he knew and Dwight knew. Maybe they could both silently agree not to mention it again. 

That was reckoning without Duke, who'd developed an incredulous grin while following all this, and now patted Dwight's arm in friendly fashion and pressed, "So, have you _ever_ had any thoughts about rearranging Nathan's face? Because I have to tell you--" He broke off suddenly, dancing backwards. "Whoa, big guy!" He turned to the rest of them. "Did you hear that? Did he just _actually_ growl?"

Exuding exasperation, Dwight said with a teeth-grit earnestness that hurt too much to be faked, "I wouldn't hit you." A pause, then with a trace of peevish frustration, "You're like half my weight class."

It was possible that was intended to inject humour, but Nathan narrowed his eyes and dug in. "Took your crazy copy down."

It hit him an eyeblink later that it was insane and counterproductive to be challenging Dwight when he needed to keep an amicable working relationship with the guy. Before he could apologise, Dwight swept him over with a reassessing look and offered grimly, "Yeah. Thanks for that. Even if you cheated."

"Is this finished?" Parker asked, rolling her eyes. "Or are you guys ready to go another round right here in the corridor?" She waited for both of them to look away from each other and went on: "So we've got two duplicates, homicidal or otherwise, disappearing after sharp encounters with a mirror. The good news seems to be that, assuming this is some kind of copy Trouble, it looks like the duplicates can't cope with mirrors."

Nathan nodded, trying to pull his head back into the game.

"Dwight," Parker said, with a chipper little injection of friendliness. "You think you could help us find the Goth kid? He or she seems to have figured out they can use their Trouble to steal. I want to forestall this before we have a Troubled crime spree on our hands."

He nodded. "Sure. Doc says I'm fine." His eyes slid back to Nathan, and away again. "Think I'll go do just that." He grabbed Duke's shoulder with a purpose that wasn't taking no for an answer. "Crocker, how about we get a sketch of this kid from Vince and make ourselves useful elsewhere?"

"What? I'm useful right here! I don't see why--" His words choked off as Dwight jerked him forward and dragged him off.

Nathan watched as Dwight shoved Duke's shoulder, herding him away. He wasn't sure if Dwight was seeking Duke's company or just seeking to get him out of their hair. "I'd normally enjoy that picture so much more."

Audrey turned slowly and peered at him thoughtfully. "What the hell was that with Dwight? He obviously knows something of what he did, or _said_ , that the rest of us don't. Which I guess testifies to these doubles being a lot like the originals. Spill. What _aren't_ you saying?"

A week ago Nathan might not have ventured an answer, but it had been long enough since Parker gave him any looks like that, open and expectant, so after rubbing his hand over his face and turning away and then back to her in a few false tries, he awkwardly broke out, louder than he'd intended, "He thinks I'm a pussy. His word."

The reaction he expected sure as hell hadn't been her laughter. 

"...Parker?" He couldn't stop a trace of annoyance leaking through.

"Oh, come _on_ , Nathan. This is the guy who carries kids for miles with a bear trap on his foot. The _bears_ are pussies compared to him." She punched him in the arm, scrunching her lips with irritation. "Please don't tell me your wounded machismo was why you decided to ditch your gun and try unarmed combat against a Viking demigod?"

Nathan flushed furiously and stammered a stumbling defence about the deadly danger to Dwight. She sighed and shook her head fondly at him.

As they made their way down the corridor toward the hospital's main exit, he saw his red face staring back from the reflective surfaces of a dozen glass door panels and observation windows 

***

Too many days at sea had left Duke's body feeling heavy and his thoughts bleary, on top of which he was vaguely conscious of needing a shower. He'd only come straight into town because Roy Deakin at the marina had said some crazy thing about Nathan and Dwight fighting, which was nuts on a level that required investigation, not the least because what was Nathan _thinking_? He'd been dead only last week and missed it so much already that he wanted to go again?

Of course, nothing was as advertised. His best enemy was too distracted to trade barbs, and somehow he'd ended up playing sidekick to a pissy Dwight. Unlike Nathan, he did have the advantage of knowing all he needed to turn the tables was a drop of blood. Fucking Troubles. But nothing so drastic was required -- okay, Duke hadn't seen Dwight in a mood quite like this before, but they'd worked together some and were kind of buddies and this wasn't an evil clone. Dwight, he could deal with. Maybe it was just as well, all things considered, that he'd been ushered away from Nathan. 

They finally paused at a crosswalk long enough for Duke to plant his feet. "Hey! Person here! You know, this floppy thing you're dragging around at the end of your arm? What's the idea, Sasquatch?"

Dwight gave him a cursory glance, muttered, "Sorry," and let go after a few tugs at Duke's knitted jersey in a futile effort to line it back up with his shoulder.

"Apologise by telling me what this is about." Duke let his teeth show, but it wasn't really a grin. They'd made it out of the hospital, out of the parking lot, and halfway down the street before Dwight would listen to him past whatever tune was playing between his ears. Now, the big guy looked less certain than usual, and Duke wasn't about to miss his chance to exploit that. He patted Dwight's shoulder consolingly, if carefully. "You don't like Nathan, that's cool. Join the club. Which, by the way, I have one, and you really can join it. We have 'We hate Wuornos' badges and everything."

Dwight gave him an unsure look, which made Duke grin even more. Yeah, the club existed. He'd founded it when he was eight years old. They'd had badges one time, too, when someone came to the school with a make-your-own-badges gizmo, and it had been _awesome_. Sadly, the badges had all been lost years ago.

"I like Nathan just fine," Dwight said impatiently. "I just... might have, in a few moments in the past, thought that he needed to man up. Now _apparently_ I told him so."

Duke could feel his grin spreading into one of those ear-to-ear face-splitters, which probably wasn't the wisest thing given the guilt in Dwight's expression. And neither was saying "Awesome" and clapping the big guy's shoulder with great affection.

Dwight shoved him off. "You're lucky the other me didn't run into _you_." 

Duke's grin folded, and he made a point of keeping his hands to his own space. "Never thought I'd see the day you were running _away_ from Nathan," he offered, meaningfully, raising his voice to carry ahead and having to jog to catch up as Dwight stalked across the road.

Dwight rounded on him. "I'm not running away. I... can't work effectively around Chief Wuornos right now. Maybe if some dick wearing your face spilled all _your_ private thoughts--" His face twitched in such a way he didn't even need to voice a sarcastic 'oh, wait', but the line of his mouth soured as he ground his jaw and he deliberately quickened his pace again. They turned in the direction of the _Haven Herald_. Duke figured he had been insulted somewhere in there.

"I _have_ private thoughts," Duke called to his back. "I do."

Duke let his steps slow to a standstill. Dwight probably wouldn't notice if he took off. On the other hand, he did want to know what the hell was going on, and there was the question of how much he really wanted to be around Nathan and Audrey right now. He'd come so close to Audrey in Colorado, close enough to know how she felt in his arms and tasted on his lips -- and know she'd responded to him in kind. Then she'd said _no_. Then they'd come home to the shock of Nathan's death, Nathan's _resurrection --_ where else but in Haven? _\--_ and Audrey's _reaction_. He'd never seen her freak out like that. Hadn't even thought she _could._ Audrey Parker, always the one with the answers, always the one in control. He'd realised that what they'd revealed in Colorado, fierce and brilliant and as damn close to love as he was sure it was, wasn't enough. Because the crazy thing with Nathan left all of that in the dust. 

That was why he'd taken off to sea and lost a chunk of the days that were potentially all the time Audrey had left. He'd needed the silence and the waves, and an in-depth discussion with a few bottles of his best rum. He wasn't sure he was over needing it yet. The other thoughts playing through his mind out there among the waves and the silence were of Nathan's still, dead form and just how close a call that had been. Everything they'd ever said to each other and other things they hadn't, and twenty-seven years of bad blood that, well, when it came down to it, just _why_? He was glad the death hadn't stuck. Nathan was alive, and that was awesome, incredible, and impossible. But in spite of his outward reassurances, he felt like he could explode at both of them right now, and wasn't sure what would come out when he did. Audrey could be snatched away from him soon. Nathan had come damned near to being stolen away from him by death. Duke should be seizing the time to be with them, not wasting that time feeling like this. 

Nathan and Audrey... Back at the hospital together, they'd be working. _Not_ touching each other, _not_ grabbing hold of the time they had left with both hands and all the vigour they could, because it was Nathan _,_ and Nathan was a repressed retard when it came to anything involving relationships, which meant that the whole thing was such a... such a _waste_. 

Duke swore aloud and sprinted to catch up with Dwight. Right then, so Vince and Dave it was, the oh-so-helpful brothers. Like that was going to be a heap of fun, either. He kicked stray stones toward the backs of Dwight's ankles. "So. We're going to see Vince?" he prompted to assert his continued presence. "Should be a blast."

They found the Teagues enveloped in a cloud of hostility, with clear battle lines drawn between their work spaces, and stationary and files arranged like walls. Not so bruised and battle-scarred as they had been, but whatever was wrong between them lately was getting worse. Duke was more than happy to keep his distance from it. Dave glowered at them for wanting Vince, while Vince fumbled for glasses and a pencil.

The sketch came together slowly. Dwight's memories were clouded by his bout of unconsciousness, and honestly, Duke still could not tell if the kid was male or female. Dwight, however, seemed to get more positive as the image resolved. "A boy. It was a boy. Dressed up like one of those rock bands, but school age, I think. We should ask around the schools." In the picture, the kid had black lipstick and eyeliner, long light-coloured hair, and a little hoop in his nose.

" _We_ can't ask around the schools," Duke pointed out. "Being the average citizens that we are."

"They know me," Dwight said, unperturbed.

Duke made a face. "Yeah, I have that problem, too." There were still a few teachers around from his schooldays, and the rest might have heard by reputation. Sometimes his kind of memorable charm could be a curse.

So they went from the offices of the _Haven Herald_ to the schools, starting, happily, with the high school he hadn't attended, and even more happily very quickly getting a name.

"Liam Anderson," said the grey-haired, scary female janitor who was Dwight's contact in the school. The familiar tattoo peeping from under her sleeve didn't do anything to make her less scary in Duke's particular estimation. "Calls himself Liam Angel, though I don't know why -- furthest thing from an angel I ever saw. Seems to think he's more like a vampire. Haven't seen him in a week, though. That one I had pegged as trouble from the day he started. That crowd don't show up half the time, when they do it's just to make a mess. Kids, hate the things. Waste of space, waste of state effort trying to educate 'em..." The rant went on for a while, but Duke tuned the rest of it out. He'd been struck by a revelation: he knew Dwight called himself a 'Cleaner', but now he had visions of a network of them, all just as freaking scary in their own ways, cleaning up the Troubles from within...

"Thanks, Clara," Dwight said, patting her on the slab of meat that purported to be her shoulder in a comradely fashion, as they parted company like old soldiers. 

"Seventeen-year-old kid," Dwight muttered in disgust as they hung around the corridor outside the principal's office, waiting for Nathan to finish a phone call that would get them access to information from Liam Anderson's file. Adjacent to them was a secondary exit onto a staff parking lot and a little further down, a wider corridor sealed off by heavy double doors as a buffer against the teenaged rabble. Maybe it wasn't the school he'd attended, but all these places looked the same -- the corridors he'd swear they all painted the same colour, closed doors of offices, noticeboards announcing the same old junk -- and waiting there made Duke feel like he was guilty of something. Dwight had his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched, but as far as Duke could tell, was mostly pissed off by the mini-pint identity of the Troubled person who'd taken him down.

"Do you think he knows what he can do?"

"He robbed Marion's till, didn't he?"

"Yeah, but... seventeen. All seventeen-year-olds are dickheads. You see an opportunity like that, you go for it, you know?"

Dwight pulled a face.

Duke wondered how the guy would react if he knew how much that reminded him of Nathan, who would've given him that exact same face, and would have done it back when they were seventeen, too. He rolled his eyes. "...What I mean is, maybe he's more interested in being able to render people unconscious and doesn't know or care about the rest."

Dwight sighed. "Fine. _Maybe_. If he only found out today, the store robbery might not be premeditated."

"That's all I'm saying." Solidarity for delinquents, after all.

Duke looked up sharply as a furore of shuffling desks and raised voices sparked up beyond the double doors that led out of the quiet admin wing and into the main part of the school. Frowning, he checked the clock on the wall. Unless they'd changed things, it wasn't break time yet. Which meant something was-- "Dwight." Duke broke from his guilty slouch, standing straighter as the thunder came nearer. "If I were that kid--" 

"Shut up," Dwight said tersely.

"--and if I _did_ know what I was doing, I know the first place I'd want to test out my new powers."

A flood of teenagers hit the doors and poured through, running and tripping over each other in a panic to reach the nearby exit to the parking lot. Among them, a few teachers shoved smaller students aside.

"I did not make that happen!" Duke protested, forced to shout over the sudden din, pressing back against the wall as the kids rolled past. He grabbed his phone and rang Audrey, hoping fervently that she would _answer_.

Dwight grabbed one of the running kids. "What's going on?"

His victim cringed from him. "I don't know! Everyone else is running!" 

Duke eyerolled. Schools. Dwight let go and tried again.

"Everyone's going nuts! That dude -- fucking Angel -- he just walks in and _looks_ at people and they fall over and go crazy! Let me go, man. Shania was -- she had a _knife_!"

Duke pressed the phone harder to his ear. "Audrey!" Finally, an answer. "He's at the school! Haven West High. You need to be down here!" He couldn't hear her answer for the surrounding roar, but hoped she'd heard him. 

Dwight yelled, "Tell the Chief to send back-up!" 

Duke threw him a helpless shrug and relayed the message, hoping that since the line was connected it got through, because he couldn't hear a thing.

The school principal, Rawson, emerged from his office to investigate, only to be turned bodily around and propelled back inside by Dwight's guiding shove between his shoulders. "Tell Chief Wuornos to send everything he's got!"

Duke hung up and dodged between the flow of students to the big guy's side. "Don't you think _we_ should be running?" 

"You run."

Okay, that was... mildly hostile. "And what will you be doing, Sasquatch? Haven does not need a second shot of Evil You! There's like a dozen insane teenagers out there already!"

Dwight grunted. "It's a high school. There are more than that."

"You know what I meant! Also? You pick now to develop a sense of humour?" Duke made an entirely futile effort to grab at the much larger man's sleeve as he struck out against the tide, wading through the bodies. "Dwight, _listen_. You think me getting caught by this is a good idea? Me and my super-strong Trouble-killing Trouble? Because I do not and--"

Dwight stopped. A few kids bounced off him. "You should go."

"No, _we_ should go. Let Audrey handle it. Nobody needs to deal with crazy _either_ of us!"

Reluctantly, Dwight nodded. "Okay. We need to get you out of here."

Almost before he'd realised it was happening, the surge dwindled and the double doors swung fully shut, the students and teachers clearing. A heavy silence fell. Duke and Dwight stared at each other, then started for the exit, Dwight hauling unnecessarily on Duke's shoulder in his urgency. Behind them, metal clanked and one door swung open again, this time for just one figure -- a short, black-clad teenager carrying a hand mirror. He had a long black coat like a cloak and swept through the door like he thought he was a freakin' vampire rock star. The coat even swirled as he stopped and posed.

 _Goddammit_ , Duke thought, and pressed back behind Dwight.

"I'm taking you in, you little shit," the big guy growled.

Duke wondered if there was any chance that not looking at the mirror would actually keep the Trouble from working. Averting his gaze as much as possible, he kept moving for the exit, hoping to get away from the kid while he was distracted by Dwight... who turned out to be a pretty good distraction, because when Liam Anderson flashed the mirror at the big guy, nothing happened.

 _Hah!_ Duke thought. _Only works once. Eat that, brat_.

Which meant that Dwight was the _perfect_ person to deal with this and could happily be left to pound the panicked kid off the walls, no guilt necessary. Duke was almost to the door, just a few feet from being free and clear, but he could see it playing out in the corner of his eye almost before it happened; the swish of the coat as the kid turned around, the glint of light from the mirror. He shut his eyes and bolted that last, short distance. He had his hand on the door and just enough time to realise that it wasn't going to work as a sensation _like_ pain sheared down his back, and the world behind his closed eyes split and swayed and then went black.

***

The school was a mess. Every cop in Haven was rounding up crazy teenagers. Every EMT in Haven was picking up the same, unconscious teenagers. Audrey just hoped the twain could be kept from meeting. Bill and Stan had called to tell her they'd hauled one kid out of his house just shy of finding daddy's gun with intent to go postal. Frankly, it would have really helped to have Tommy Bowen around, who had been better at the regular day-to-day shit of controlling maniacs. If only Tommy hadn't been missing-maybe-dead and _evil_.

"This is a disaster. Who has more buried issues and barely contained violence than teenagers?" Audrey complained as she put her phone away, storming down the corridor, back from another confrontation with a delinquent they'd finally hauled out of the classroom where this mess had all started. He'd stabbed his teacher two dozen times with the sharp point of a compass. "Just _how_ many kids have thought about shooting up their class, anyway? I was -- _Audrey Parker_ was never this dysfunctional in school, I swear."

Dwight grunted and sketched a nasty grin, or at least an expression that showed white teeth. "Least _they're_ easier to sit on once you get hold of them." He was nursing a scratched-up face and still moving with obvious pain. "Crocker..." He seethed Duke's name like a swear word.

They stopped where Duke was still lying on the floor, tucked in over by the wall with Audrey's jacket rolled up under his head, and she bobbed down to check on him again. There'd been no change since they left -- he was out cold, but like Marion and Dwight, like the unconscious kids, had no mark on him. There weren't enough EMTs in Haven to handle all the casualties, but Audrey would have been more worried if they hadn't had Dwight and Marion's demonstration that that part of the problem would resolve itself. In the meantime, help had been called from neighbouring districts. Claire was working with the copies they'd rounded up so far, but reasoning with them didn't seem to have much effect. The duplicate kids had hair trigger tempers and were prone to violence. 

It had already been frustratingly established that neither reflecting the doubles in a mirror nor dropping their blood on one dispelled them, and Nathan had even guiltily, _carefully_ used a mirror shard to break a tiny slice of skin on the arm of one unconscious, subdued brat in case it was that which made the difference, but to no avail.

"Must need to be the mirror that created them," Nathan had muttered, and on confirmation that Liam Anderson was carrying that with him, had gone off to liaise with the principal about contacting home and family to track the kid down.

"So. Nathan _and_ Duke," Audrey offered, as she stood up, then checked her feet because Dwight's height always made her feel like she hadn't finished standing up yet. "You aren't having a good day."

"The copy knows what Duke knows," Dwight said darkly. "Had Duke's Trouble, drew blood first." He directed what was surely an unfair glare toward the unconscious original. 

"Yeah. Who knew Duke could cat-scratch like a girl?" The quip fell flat. The double being afflicted was worrying. Duke's Trouble might do a lot of damage in the wrong hands, and the Guard were going to freak out. Since Audrey particularly didn't want to draw their attention to Duke, in the light of past ominous-predictions-of-death, she would rather this was solved quickly and quietly before the Guard could ever find out. She was beginning to get concerned about how long Nathan had been gone, and _hoped_ his eagerness to strike off alone hadn't been so he could phone a quiet heads-up to Jordan. Audrey wanted to trust him, but he was working from his own agenda these days. That, she acknowledged, was in part her own fault. Pushing him away, not trusting him, had caused them both to discover that he didn't need her approval to keep fighting for her; not for what he did, nor the methods he chose to do it.

Hell, Nathan was right. The Troubled deserved to know and be ready to protect themselves. But if she could protect them _first_...

"Weirdest thing I've seen for a while," Dwight commented, unprompted, which was a good indication he was disturbed. "Like the new Duke bubbled up out of the original... Got these bulges over one side of his body, next instant there was a perfect replica standing there. Happened quick. Not surprising we're getting so many confused reports from the witnesses."

"Especially from witnesses still in denial that the Troubles exist." Audrey frowned up at Dwight. The replica Duke hadn't harmed him, and that could be a good sign. But then his sense of self-preservation might have suggested that this was a fight better ducked out from than pursued to its end. Duke, unlike Nathan, actually _having_ a sense of self-preservation. She sighed. An evil Duke was out there, with Duke's Trouble, and Nathan was already paranoid about the Crocker legacy.

"You and me, Dwight," she said, squeezing a muscular arm. "We're both immune, so we're going to find that kid between us. I'll tell Nathan he'll have to hold the fort here. Can you get Duke out to your truck? If he wakes up in time, we can use his help, too."

Dwight's grunt wasn't exactly agreement or disagreement. He did, however, lean down and wordlessly haul Duke up over one of his shoulders. 

Audrey winced.

Dwight read her face. "He'll be fine." He shifted the dead weight with uncharitable force. "I was." She watched as he marched through the propped-open double doors and turned right to take Duke out into the parking lot. Audrey did not feel terribly reassured. 

"All right, Nathan..." she huffed aloud. She bent down and picked up her jacket, then headed through the double doors as well, checking the signs for the school principal's office. 

As she raised her hand to knock on the door, a voice from within made her freeze. "You're the one that lost him, you little toad! Thought this was your big superpower." Duke. That was _Duke_... _Oh, crap_.

"Cops! You're crazy, man," a younger voice replied. "That was the _Chief_ cop!"

"Will you _stop_ harping on about that? Nathan's not chief of anything. His _dad_ was the Chief, and _you_ \-- _you_ said you'd get him for me!"

"I don't control them!" Liam shouted back. "You're the first one that ever agreed to stick around!"

"Because _you_ said you'd help me. I'm an agreeable kind of guy. You do me a favour, I'll do you one. But you _lost my guy_!"

"I didn't lose him! He wasn't even fuckin' interested in you, dude. Just smirked and ran off--" The harsh sound of a blow cut off Liam's protest. There was a pause, and then a strange noise that might have had its origin on Duke's lips.

" _Damn_ , what a rush! I really need to do that more often. And you, you need to shut the fuck up, kid. Don't mouth off about things you don't understand. Nathan's mine."

"...What about that one?" Liam asked, indistinctly.

"That one's boring, he never agrees to _anything_. I want the fun version. Like _I'm_ the fun version, see? Where's the point in being the fun version alone? Too bad we really can't do Audrey, get the trifecta. Because that? That would be _perfect_."

Audrey moved quietly away from the door, keeping her gun low and ready while she looked for a recess she could duck into. She slipped around a corner where an upright, free-standing noticeboard stood next to a trophy cabinet and quietly called up Dwight, who was now apparently her only backup. 

A hand molded itself over her mouth and an arm circled her waist and hauled her backwards. She dropped her phone to grapple, but was reluctant to give up on her gun, even though it was pressed uselessly to her side. She struggled, bucking and kicking, until Nathan's voice whispered in her ear, "It's me," and she automatically stopped.

 _Not Nathan_ , the reasoning part of her brain screamed, and she started struggling again. A stamp on his foot achieved nothing... the copies had the Troubles of the original. He pulled her closer until she could feel him pressing against the full length of her body. Too close in for any of the defensive manoeuvres she'd been taught, and close enough for his greater strength and size to neutralize hers.

He held her, without doing anything, letting her wear herself out. His own breath kept catching, and his face was leaned forward over her shoulder, his cheek against hers, his sleeves rolled up so their bare arms touched... She could see the tattoo, with its recent damage. If he had Nathan's Trouble, it was clear enough he was enjoying this, and that was all kinds of creepy.

"Wow..." he murmured in her ear. "I never realised. When I hold you like this long enough, I can feel your body heat start to seep through our clothes." He took his hand off her mouth. She debated yelling, but the only people that she knew were close enough to come running, fast, were Bad!Duke and Liam. 

"What do you want?" she asked.

"That's a loaded question." Oh God, those were his lips trailing down the rim of her ear to her neck, nuzzling into her throat. She'd thought she'd have a problem with shooting the copy, after seeing Nathan shot to death only days ago. As her stomach knotted with revulsion the further he took advantage, she decided she could shoot him just fine. 

She really tried, contorting her wrist, trying to twist the gun around to at least nail him in the foot, but he looked down, hearing the soft _crunch_ from her wrist joint as she abused it _._ He twisted the weapon out of her hand and chucked it negligently across the floor.

"Come on, Parker," he said. "I figure there must be a few things we've both wanted to do for a while." He turned her around and shoved her back against the wall. He was too fast and she too tired and breathless to make use of the momentary shift in his grip on her. He pressed his body against her from the front, letting his weight hold her there. She felt the heat of his groin against hers. Their hands pushed and grappled, but if anything he seemed to allow her blows, move into them needily as if he sought out all and any _touch_. The inescapability of the situation started to build into an unaccustomed panic Audrey had to struggle to control. The noticeboard and trophy cabinet mostly obscured them from the view of the corridor, if anyone had been around anyway, to help or to care.

"What about Jordan?" she asked, finding it hard to catch her breath. The size and strength differential between them had never been an issue before. She'd never much thought about it. 

"Can't feel Jordan." One of his hands slid up under her shirt, then down past the waistband of her jeans. She tried, again, to push him off, but he pinned her wrist across her body to her opposite elbow, neatly restraining the movement of both arms. His face plunged in close and she gasped, unintentionally making it easy for him to seize her mouth with his. Trying to pull away from the kiss -- she'd kissed Nathan before, sweet and too-brief and with intent to take up where they left off sometime, but _not like this_! -- she felt his hand slide down into her underwear and his fingers drift over her sex. He made an appreciative noise and pulled back his lips to say hoarsely. "I remember what moisture feels like, Audrey."

"Nathan, don't do this!" she hissed. "I don't want to. Not here, like... _Mmf_." He was ready to catch her cry in his lips as one of his fingers entered her, swiftly joined by another, and a few deft thrusts had her writhing, crushed between him and the wall.

Her half-free hand beat, shoved, scratched and nipped at him, but he wasn't even aware of most of it. She felt the ripple whenever her skin made direct contact with his, as he enjoyed her touch even when her intent was to cause pain. She panted into his shoulder as his mouth worked down to her throat, while his hand slid partway out to add another long, slim finger. Humiliatingly, she bucked onto him as the base of his thumb pushed hard into a sweet spot. "Nathan--"

"I know. You're ready--" He loosened his grip to fumble at his zipper, pushing harder against her to keep her pinned while her hands were free.

" _No_ ," she whispered, her voice strained and tiny.

His fingers slid out of her to tug at her waistband, and as his unfastening zipper sang sharply, her hand fell on the gun at _his_ belt. 

"You _bastard_ ," spat Duke Crocker from the edge of the alcove.

His dive ripped Nathan away from her but left the gun in her hand. She got off a shot at both of them. In retrospect, not a great plan. Blood flew from Nathan's arm, and Duke's eyes flashed silver as he gave a triumphal roar. Audrey's legs refused to support her any longer and she slid down the wall, her body throbbing. She squeezed her knees together, a sob hitching in her chest, and tried to keep the gun close to level.

"I came back for you, and what do you do? You go straight for her? Not cool, Nate. Not cool." The heavy smack of flesh punctuating Duke's words made her wince. She didn't know just how hard those punches were with his enhanced strength behind them, but they slammed Nathan around like a rag doll. Silver eyes faded back to brown, though, and their grappling became more evenly matched. There was something weird about Duke's focus, his hands diving in for bare flesh, for Nathan's face, his lips, even a quick grope to the groin. Nathan executed a head-butt so violent he split the skin of his own forehead and activated Duke's Trouble again. Duke pinned him down easily and shoved a hand into his open fly. "You were supposed to be _mine_! If you're feeling frisky, _I_ can fix that, damn it." Nathan's face twisted in helpless anger but physical indifference as Duke had his way for all of ten seconds. When the strength-boost ran out, Nathan somehow flipped them and broke free, slamming a knee into Duke's stomach as he rose. He shrugged his jacket off his shoulders, turned it inside-out over his hands, and hauled Duke up with both hands around his neck, letting the jacket provide a buffer against the threat of his own blood. 

For a moment, Audrey honestly thought he was going to kill him. Instead, Nathan jerked back and kicked Duke into the trophy cabinet, showering glass everywhere. Audrey shielded her face, catching a few splinters in her arms.

"That work when you bleed your own blood?" Nathan gritted out. 

Duke was doing a reasonable amount of that now. He rolled and swore unhappily, nowhere to place his limbs that wasn't awash with sharp edges, shedding broken spars of wood and shattered glass in a tinkling cascade. He shook his head, thrashing bright chips from his hair that caught the light and added their own music when they hit the floor. His shapeless knitted jersey had protected him from the worst, but a few pieces had skewered the thick wool, and glittering shards caught in the weave. He yanked his sleeves down over his hands so he could plant them for leverage.

"You _ass_ ," Duke growled, surging to his knees, one hand scrabbling among the debris. "You and me, Nathan! You and me!" He gestured, arms waving emphatically between them. "We were supposed to work together!"

"Which has ever happened _when_?" Nathan was swaying on his feet and breathing hard, with his clothes yanked back into place and fastened again. He spat blood from a split lip, but made sure to spit it behind him.

"All right!" Audrey stood up, Nathan's gun shaking more than she was happy about in her hands. "Put the testosterone away and stand down. Nathan, do you think I won't _fucking_ shoot you right now? No means _no_. Learn it! Stop walking!" Evidently he believed her threat, because he stopped trying to close the gap between them and backed off more carefully. "Duke! Put _down_ the cup." The trophy he'd hefted as a weapon was huge and bronze and made a clang when it hit the floor that caused her to flinch in spite of herself. Nathan used the opportunity to duck behind the noticeboard and flee. Audrey got a wild shot off, puncturing a flyer about a school pick-up-litter campaign. She swore and turned the weapon on Duke. 

"You won't shoot me," he said, hands raised but moving closer, his most piratical smile on his face.

"I shot him," she countered, which gave him pause.

"Yeah. Nathan. I can make him pay for that, you know."

"No, you're going to stay here and be a good boy." She fished out her cuffs and threw them to him. "Put those on. If you want a choice, I _swear_ , I have no problem shooting you right now. You're not the real Duke."

"No, I'm the _fun_ Duke."

"Heard it. Cuffs!" She knew better than to relax as he slipped them over one wrist and moved to fix the other.

"Hey, lady? Want to check your face? You have a little something--"

She _did_ hesitate when faced with Liam Anderson. What was he, after all, other than a beat-up seventeen-year-old kid flashing a hand mirror? One that couldn't hurt her, for all his mischief already. All she saw in the mirror was her own reflection, lips red and swollen from Nathan's forced kisses and a smear of blood from flying glass across one cheek.

"--Give it up, kid, it won't work." 

She was still dazed from Nathan's antics: must be, because before she knew it, Bad!Duke had gotten past her and behind the kid, handcuffs swinging loosely from one wrist. He held Liam like a human shield and backed the two of them out into the hallway. At the corner, Duke gave her a feral grin as he patted the kid on his bloody chin. His eyes flashed silver and he took off at his crazy mutant speed, hauling Liam with him.

Shit! She hadn't even got a shot off! Audrey rounded the corridor, angry and with renewed purpose, but saw only a couple of confused EMTs picking themselves up. Duke and the kid were out of sight. She chased into the parking lot, but they were gone, and in the ongoing confusion, no one could even tell her if they'd seen them, much less whether they'd left on foot or taken a car. 

Audrey couldn't see Dwight's van in the immediate vicinity, so she returned to the hallway, retrieved her own gun and phone and tried to call Dwight again as she ventured to investigate the principal's office. She hoped the big Cleaner hadn't run afoul of any more duplicates. It hadn't been much more than ten minutes...

"Sleeping Beauty is all settled in--" Dwight said, answering almost at once. 

"Dwight." Nathan and the principal were unconscious on the floor of the office. By the look of him, the latter might have been downed only by a solid punch. "Things just got worse. There's an _asshole_ copy of Nathan running around and Bad!Duke is helping the kid." Audrey eyed Nathan and shivered. She tried to be firm with herself and separate him from the actions of the copy in her mind, but the sense of violation crushed out her breath.

 _No_... It wasn't him. She consciously calmed her breathing while Dwight's response floated past her unheard. Nathan would barely smile in public, much less... It _wasn't him_. She needed to keep her faith in her partner.

Besides which, she couldn't _deal_ with that right now. Nathan was out of action; she needed to take charge of _this_. And she was going to need both Nathan and Duke's help to handle their alternates.

"Dwight?" she said, regrouping. "I need you up here in the principal's office to carry out another load."

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Esoteric content of Liam's bookshelves is pretty similar to my own, for the record.

Nathan woke to sensation coursing through his body, by far the most of it painful. His stomach clenched with nausea, his arms and ribs blazed with pain, and a dozen muscle aches formed an unpleasant background clamour. A sharpness in his bladder that he hadn't felt for a long time also suggested he was going to embarrass himself if it wasn't dealt with fast. He was vaguely aware of other people in the room -- his office at the station -- but he ignored them as he staggered up and lurched out to the men's room. He just about made it to a sink before throwing up.

Managing to stay upright through relieving himself and cleaning up was torture, and the novelty of _pain_ didn't help him much. The sensation of the cold, clean water as he splashed it over his face did help. Nathan stared into the grimy mirror, his own pale features blinking hollow-eyed back at him; he traced his face with his fingertips in wonder, then dropped his hands back into the stream of water from the faucet, letting it rush over his palms. He leaned on the sink and thought he could stay like this indefinitely. The ghost in the mirror cracked a smile.

A sharp rap on the door straightened him up. Audrey's voice said distinctly, "I'm coming in! Cover up anything I don't want to see." A moment later the door opened a slit and she peered through it, then opened it wider. "And you're smiling. I was worried. What the hell, Nathan?"

Nathan brushed the back of his hand over his chin self-consciously and drew in a shuddering breath, because most of the sensations he was experiencing still weren't favourable ones. "I can feel." He took in her nonplussed expression, and considered the rest of the situation, which was that he'd woken up from unconsciousness in his own office, feeling like hell, _feeling_ period, with -- he tried to remember -- Audrey, Duke and... Dwight? "I got doubled, didn't I?" he asked heavily. "Like Duke. So the duplicate's Troubled, and I'm not? Is that how it works?"

"Duke's thing isn't as easy to check, but we can ask," Parker said.

"No need." Nathan wrenched the flow of water to a halt and wiped his hands on his jeans disgustedly. This was... well, it was temporary, was what it was, and it was going to disappear. Again. A matter of time until he'd be back to feeling nothing, left with only the reminder of what he'd been missing. He'd done this one before. Maybe this time the unenviable nature of most of the things he was experiencing would help. Meanwhile... sensation was a distraction he didn't need, with this Trouble still at large.

A desperate but intimidated officer tip-toed behind Parker, and Nathan took pity on him. "Let's move this back to the office." He placed his hand on her shoulder, feeling the cool, soft leather of her jacket. Audrey would be just like anyone else to his touch right now. She surprised him by brushing the hand off and quickening her steps, but they were back at his office with more important things to think about before he could really think about it.

Duke looked up from his slump on the soft chair in the corner. He looked like Nathan felt. "What's up with you?" he grunted, belligerently.

"I'm not Troubled," Nathan said. He ousted Dwight with a pointed glower and took his own seat behind the Chief's desk. His gun was on the desktop, and that didn't make sense. He could feel it digging into his back, its weight dragging at his hip. The duplicate's gun, then. "Means I get to feel _all_ of this."

"Lucky you," said Duke. "I feel like crap. And _you_ haven't even heard Audrey's great news yet."

"Duplicates of me and you wreaking havoc?" 

"Not quite," Parker said. "We don't know what you're doing, which is kind of worrying in its own right. I got off a shot and winged you, but we all know how much that's going to slow you down."

 _This is weird_ , Nathan thought past his headache.

"Duke... he's been helping Liam Anderson, the kid who caused all this."

"Why?" Dwight asked.

"I..." Parker hesitated, casting an odd glance between Nathan and Duke, and concluded, "General Chaotic Evil, I think."

Nathan snorted laughter despite himself. The joke was a deflection, and he didn't know why, but as an answer, that sure as hell made its own kind of sense. He raised an eyebrow at Duke.

"Not funny," Duke told him. "Bad!Duke is a dick. I'm Good!Duke, remember?"

"I think there's a problem with our definitions." 

"Quiet," Parker said. "Although while we're talking about it, your double, Nathan? Also a dick. Right now, our priority has to be rounding up both of you and stopping Liam as soon as possible. That kid is a walking situation all by himself, charging around making conscience-free, inhibition-free, morally absent versions of people."

Nathan asked, "What about the schoolkids that got copied?"

"The department's handling the kids." Audrey sighed, a grim, weary edge to her that he'd seldom seen. "Most of them are already in custody, and Claire's dealing with the copies for now. But we're going to need that mirror Liam's carrying around. One of the copies... got hit by a truck after leaving the school. Killed instantly. At the same time so far as anyone can determine, the original went into cardiac arrest, and he's now on life support. He might not make it. It looks like we have no choice but to dispel the copies with the mirror Liam used to make them."

There was a tense silence while everyone absorbed that.

"We also need to keep anyone from the department encountering the copies of you two," Dwight put in soberly, looking between Nathan and Duke. "Hell, keep all contact in general to a minimum. I've been thinking about how badly it could have gone for me, if that guy had been allowed to run amok in public wearing this mug. But if it's the Police Chief? Or if word gets around that _Duke's_ acting out of control? We need to keep this quiet to stop any repercussions from their actions reflecting on either of you."

Nathan groaned and rubbed his forehead. He stopped and pulled his hand clear when he realised three startled pairs of eyes had turned on him. "What? I can _feel_ this headache."

"Audrey," Duke picked up, a fraction abrasively. "Whatever you're not telling us about what happened when you encountered the duplicates... is there something we need to know to understand what we're dealing with?"

"It's embarrassing," she warned, eying Dwight. 

"Embarrassing," Dwight muttered with disdain. His hands delved deep into his pockets and he prowled the room, searching out his words. "I figure I know about that." He stilled and looked back uneasily. "Chief, earlier... Like I said, in a way you saved my bacon, and I owe you an apology."

Nathan sighed. "You don't. Not your fault what some evil version of you says or does. Haven... It was bound to happen sooner or later."

Duke snorted at the semi-joke before shaking his head and returning to staring at Parker with suspicion, but she didn't even notice, and Nathan was unsettled by the grim attention she kept pushing his own way. "What is it, Parker?"

She hesitated, her face closed off and her eyes drifting before they snapped into focus decisively. "Okay, I guess you have technically asked for it. Ideally, I'd take you off into separate rooms to lay it on gently, and bring Claire in to provide _lots of nice therapy_ , but we don't have time. Nathan, I'm not really worried about your clone threatening the town at large, because he's fixated on me. I'm the only person you-- _he_ can feel. He... doesn't have the decency and conscience and..." She gave him a mixed appraisal, weighing something up, before adding, "reserve, that you do."

"You bastard!" Duke snapped, leaning forward from his chair, ready to launch himself.

"Not _me_ ," Nathan choked out. He was still trying to work through that very vague admission. For all he knew he shouldn't be defending... himself. "Parker, what did he do?"

"Duke," she continued firmly. "Your clone was rather fixed on... Nathan."

Duke stopped half-straining towards Nathan and sat back quickly. 

Dwight gaped and muttered, "Oh... well, that's interesting, Crocker."

"We've known each other a long time," Duke said cagily.

Nathan nodded. Like he could care in the least right now. "Got a long history. _Parker_ \--"

Her hard smile showed the points of her teeth. "He wanted a partner, and _I'm_ certainly finding it hard to interpret that as 'partner in crime' after what I witnessed. The deal with Liam Anderson seemed to be that he'd copy Nathan, and I'm guessing the alliance between them won't hold up long now that's done."

Duke stared. "I what? What did I--? For _Nathan_?" His incredulity might have been annoying had Nathan had the least attention to pay him.

"Parker, what did I _do_?"

" _You_ didn't." She rounded on him with a certain amount of anger. "We're not discussing it now."

Duke raised his hand, looking steely despite the silly gesture. "I volunteer to go after soulless!Nathan."

" _Fuck off_ ," Nathan growled. "Parker, I need to know. Are we talking about sexual assault?"

"Would knowing that _help_? This is about me, too. Besides, it's... complicated. It was still you, Nathan, even if it was your worse half..." She turned her back on him. 

Dwight gave her a sympathetic frown and Nathan a warning one. 

Nathan stood up, boiling with frustration at being locked out. The fresh wave of nausea and dizziness could go screw itself, too. "Fine. Duke, you want to deal with the copy of me? Go ahead."

The nasty twist of Duke's mouth might have been alarming had Nathan not been feeling the same rage.

" _Hey_ ," Parker snapped. "I already said we _can't kill them_. You heard what that might do."

"Right. Except if Bad!Nathan _is_ after you, he's likely to show up where you are sooner or later," Duke pointed out, his expression going flat. "Which means you have to be prepared to defend yourself _somehow_."

"That's it," Nathan growled. "I'm sorry, Audrey, but I am not leaving you without protection. This bastard--"

"And I'm not leaving you with _him_ ," Duke cut in.

"You--" Nathan growled, and froze as he saw the look on Audrey's face. It was clear as day she didn't want him around right now. His chest clenched painfully. _Something_ had happened, but he couldn't tell how far it had gone. If it was something their relationship -- their friendship -- could come back from. 

Dwight intervened brusquely, "I'll stick around and watch your back, Audrey. You two... Why don't _both_ of you handle the two copies."

Nathan could deal with Duke, in this mood or any other, and heading after his own wretched evil clone was where they both wanted to be. "Fine, we'll go together." He looked at Duke. "Check your boat and my place. Check the _Gull_." He took out his service weapon and held it next to the one on the table, comparing every scuff and flaw of wear on it. They were the same. "These guys have everything. Our keys, our credit cards. They can go where we'd go. But that also means we can run checks. I'll put someone on that. Quietly."

He and Duke eyed each other a long time before the other man nodded. 

"All right," Parker said. "Just... try not to end up fighting each other." She gave a frustrated little snort. "Oh, you know what I mean. Dwight and I will hunt down Liam. Keep in touch." She met Nathan's eyes, looking a little bit sorry. He didn't know what to do with apologies. The enemy was _him_. Whatever had happened was _in him_ somewhere. What was he supposed to do with that?

"Nathan. _Nate_." Duke's insistent voice dragged his attention back. A rough hand on his shoulder hustled him to the door and set off all the grumbles of his bruised ribs. "Come on. Got to go clean up after ourselves, right?" Disgust was plain in Duke's voice. That made two of them.

Dwight had had it easy.

***

"Even if I discover they habitually beat this kid three times a day before meals and make him sleep in a cupboard, I swear it's not gonna make him any less a pain in my ass," Audrey declared, peering out of the windshield to catch the street names as she guided her little car along Haven's residential streets, trying to follow Stan's curt local-esque directions to Liam Anderson's address. There was consistently no answer on any of the phone numbers provided, and given the circumstances, she figured checking the place out was definitely called for. Even if they couldn't find his parents, she could hope that the little pain had been dumb enough to go home.

Dwight, in the passenger seat, grunted agreement. He seemed less gruff now that he wasn't the only one with an evil twin problem, and it helped that they had concrete steps to take. Dwight, in Audrey's observed opinion, was nothing if not task oriented. 

"You know you can take comfort in one thing," she told him. "Duke and Nathan's duplicates? So much more annoying than yours."

She'd hoped she might get a laugh, but no. Dwight gave her a sidelong look, as though warily weighing up what had happened to both of them, and apparently concluded that, okay, they'd talk about him. "I wish it hadn't been the Chief. Should've been Crocker. Or -- someone else. Guess yesterday was just more fresh."

She didn't really feel she knew Dwight well enough to open up about what had taken place with the duplicate Nathan, so it was hypocritical to want to know about his experience of being copied, to prod him for clues of how _real_ that other Dwight had been. It wasn't as though she could talk to her closest friends, not with Duke in a rage, and Nathan... Nathan _hadn't_ handled it well, but there probably wasn't a good way to take that kind of news. The memory of his helpless anguish and impossible-to-direct anger, and the way she'd been unable to say or do anything to help him out, made her feel _guilty_ on top of the rest. 

__

Later, she could talk this over with Claire, or if not Claire then at least a bottle of pink wine and a mountain of cupcakes. Right now, she had Liam to focus on. And, to a lesser degree, fixing things with Dwight. Without making it an inquisition.

"We know you respect Nathan," Audrey cut herself off when she saw the street sign they'd been looking for. "This is the road. Keep a lookout for number 11." 

It was, in fact, a rather affluent street, with big detached houses and green, expansive gardens. 

She picked up her original thread. "Hey, there're bound to be a few teething problems, after working with the old Chief for so long, and Nathan and I, well, we don't know how you and the Chief used to operate. Not like he ever told us." She added, more pointedly, "Or you ever told us."

Dwight, as a point of fact, never told them much of anything, until volunteering information became absolutely necessary. Audrey had come to think of it as The Haven Disease.

Dwight didn't take the bait. Instead he gave an indicative nod of his head. "It's there."

Typical. But Audrey let it go. She gave a low whistle as she pulled the little car to a halt. "These people certainly don't go short of anything."

Dwight unrolled himself from the car like a hedgehog uncurling from a ball. He shook himself out, and they trudged to the gate, where they had a better view of the semi-mansion where Liam's parents lived. The trim garden and carefully controlled climbers artfully decorating the frontage of the large house spoke of staff. Audrey folded her arms and tapped her elbows, chewing the side of her cheek. "Okay, now I'm liking this kid even less," she admitted. The real Audrey Parker's memories of growing up in a packed state orphanage still felt like her own. "On the other hand, nice house, should be a pleasure to break into."

Dwight shot her a guarded, sideways look that wasn't sure how seriously to take that.

They did try the bell just in case, but nobody was answering that any more than the phone, so Audrey called the station and got them to disable the police alarm response, then set to work on the lock.

She'd bet anything Dwight could have done it, too, from the canny way he watched, but as usual, he didn't volunteer information and she was left to speculate on the skill set of his elusive 'cleaning' duties.

Audrey drew her gun automatically as she stepped through the door into the darkened interior. Dwight cleared his throat and said, "I was hoping you'd not need that."

"...Right. Sorry." She scanned the room before lowering the weapon, and nodded at him. "You wearing a vest?" It was hard to tell under the bulk and layers. 

"Usually, yeah."

Audrey considered his exposed head and sighed. She thought about Bad!Duke, who she couldn't really risk shooting anyway, after learning about the kid in the coma. She took the clip out of her gun and ejected the final bullet from the barrel, then made a silent show of placing both in her pocket and raising the empty gun. "I figure even if he puts up a fight, the two of us can take Liam, since his Trouble is a one-shot deal," she murmured and, maintaining just the threat of the gun in her hand, carried on.

As they moved through the house, Audrey noticed -- well, mostly _wow_ , the furniture was great, the carpets must have cost a fortune, she couldn't imagine the price tag on some of the ornaments, and this place had to be a full time job for _someone_ to dust. But she also noticed there were no mirrors, except in the bathrooms, which was probably safest if you had to have them somewhere.

Dwight noticed, too. "You think they told him?" 

"If his family told him about his Trouble, he was way too excited to finally get it."

Audrey replaced the clip and put her gun away. There was no-one in the house.

She and Dwight gravitated toward an office, where they raided Liam's father's desk and found a telephone/address book with business contacts and phone numbers, with annotations like 'new mobile', 'work phone'. It seemed Liam's father worked abroad a lot, at big, expensive business conferences in big, exclusive hotels. Audrey flipped through receipts and business cards, scanned the appointment calendar on his computer. The cleaner's and gardener's details were in his account book. Failing everything else, Audrey thought, they could at least question _them_. From the look of things, they might actually see more of the kid than his parents did. Wryly, she considered that this family would have fit right in with Moira and Noelle's scam.

Before leaving, they returned to Liam's room, glimpsed only briefly on the initial search of the house; Audrey was hoping for some insight into the kid's psyche. _Know your enemy_ remained a valid maxim, even if teenage boys were hardly her usual foe.

Liam's room was the only bedroom, apart from the obvious master bedroom, with any trace of personality in it. Despite containing a significant amount of black in the decor, it didn't look like any teenager's room she had ever seen, mostly because of the sheer unholy tidiness and order, just like in the rest of the home. She could start to see, just a little, why the kid might act out. Audrey trailed her hand over a shelf of esoteric books, dusted to perfection. The word 'magic' appeared in the titles in a variety of imaginative spellings. "If Liam was into mysticism to start with..."

"No wonder he took to his Trouble like a duck to water, huh?" Dwight said. "Not that reading Alistair Crowley automatically creates evil little bastards, but it sure seems the kid's enthused to discover he has a power."

"He's certainly made the jump headlong into using real 'magic' with visible results."

Dwight made an agreeing grunt. "Should've seen the brat strut into that hallway, swinging his mirror, watching the panic. _Smiling_."

Liam also liked his rock bands and vampire fiction, but that wasn't anything they hadn't known or guessed. Duke had called him a little poser. The lengths Duke had expanded on the subject might have been funny if she hadn't witnessed the awful brutality of the fight between his and Nathan's duplicates, and if it hadn't been for how Bad!Nathan had so joyously violated her. Liam's teenage ego, overactive sense of drama and chaotic morality had _caused that_. Willfully. He probably still thought it was _funny_.

"I'd normally set a car to watch this place," Audrey said, pulling herself sharply out of her brooding thoughts. "Except we've nowhere near the manpower to spare. What say you we change the locks and switch that alarm back on? That way, if he does come back, at least we'll know about it."

And if his parents decided to show up, she would deal with that when it happened. She couldn't promise she'd deal with it _politely_ , but everything they'd found out of place in the house was suggestive only of a teenager's occupation, and honestly? It pretty much looked like Liam was living there himself with full run of the place, apart from the cleaner's daily intercession.

"I can do that," Dwight said. "Just let me go raid what I need from their garage."

***

"So let me get this straight," Duke said, tone laced with resentment as they walked out to Nathan's beast of a car, which kudos to Audrey for somehow managing to drive back from the school. "You're not Troubled right now. I'm probably not Troubled right now. So basically we're rid of the curses neither of us want anyway, but we have to take them _back_ because _this_ Trouble puts them in the hands of _total dicks_."

"Yeah," Nathan grunted. Trouble-free he might be, but Nathan was not a happy boy right now. 

Duke waited a moment, but it seemed 'yeah' was all he was going to get.

"This Trouble officially sucks worse than the one that almost aged me to death." He was practically vibrating with his frustration. Knowing that Nathan's alternate had had his hands on Audrey frankly made Duke want to do the original some damage, taking full advantage of the fact he'd feel it. 

Although when you really thought about it -- which he didn't want to, _but_ \-- if you hadn't had sex for _at least three years_ and there was only one person in the world whose touch would actually do it for you, well, the resulting fixation _was_ predictable.

"Fucker," Duke muttered reflexively as he eyed the man striding in front of him. Demonstrably, though, this was a different sort of Nathan, who could feel anyone he wanted right now, and yet was working, _again_. As Nathan climbed into the truck, Duke hovered a hand over his back, but didn't connect. Instead, he shook his head and rounded to the passenger side.

"Did you just do something?" Nate asked sharply, glancing over his shoulder.

"You should talk to Claire about that paranoia. You can _feel_. You'd know."

Nathan's returning scowl was confused, and Duke sighed at him. Truth was, he sorely wanted to just... what? Reach out and poke him, punch him, shake his hand? Anything, maybe, to give him that excuse to touch. There'd been so many years of not being able to connect at all, and he'd wasted the last opportunity to make any physical impression on Nathan. But he'd already had a good demonstration of the problems caused by lack of impulse control today, so he squashed the urge. He was _good_ Duke, after all.

"We'll go to my house, first." Nathan said.

His sliced-up hands were clumsy as he started the engine, and his face full of small twitches from the pain. Duke thought about raising the issue of the pain pills that would've been pressed on him automatically if he were anyone else, but figured he'd leave Nathan to appreciate all the subtle nuances. Wasn't like he got the chance often, after all. 

And, wow, he was to be treated to a tour of the Wuornos estate? Duke could hardly wait.

Nathan's place was a fucking mess. Standing in the living room, surrounded by Nathan's weird shit and a clutter that distinctly hadn't characterised his living arrangements last time Duke had seen them, Duke could do nothing but gawp. " _That guy really turned your place over, huh_?" had left his tongue, and Nathan had given him a look of embarrassment mixed with annoyance and said that, no, the alternate version of himself hadn't been there so far as he could tell.

"You're living like this?" It came out without thought, but damn, Evi had been better at housekeeping. "No wonder you never bring anyone home."

"I've been _busy_ ," Nathan snapped.

Right. Chief of Police. Audrey. Kidnappings. Troubles. Serial murders. Dead last week.

"You can't hire a maid? Shit, I thought you had to avoid, you know, bumps and shit. You're a fucking neat-freak." At least, he had been in school. When Duke thought about it, he wondered how much of that had been enforced by his parents. Nathan himself was demonstrably more self-destructive in the face of his Trouble, tempting fate and flying against common sense. "How do you live like this?"

"Past two weeks I've been back six hours a night, to _sleep_. State of the place hasn't been bothering me much."

"Well, you are a Pig, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised you live in a sty." Duke gave a dark little laugh at his own funny.

They checked the rest of the place for completeness, but Nathan kept trying to herd Duke away from and out of various rooms -- ooh, _decoupage_ , pretty. There was no one there, and honest to God, Duke didn't know how you'd tell if anyone _had_ been there, though Nate claimed that he could. It looked like whatever personal life he'd had had gone down the toilet since Garland Wuornos died and the Teagues in whatever fucking wisdom they thought they possessed had pushed to have Nate installed as replacement Chief.

"It cannot possibly be healthy that you're living like this. I mean, I would worry that this house represents the mental state of Haven's Police Chief." Duke gave his verdict as they finally walked out. "But I kinda like the decoupage."

"Thanks," Nathan said, either grudging or ironic.

"How do you do those tiny details when you can't feel your fingers?"

"Carefully. Look, can we _move on_?"

"Sure, but somehow you're so much less macho than you used to be. And yet so much more talented."

"I'll _shoot you_ if you continue this conversation."

"...Okay," Duke conceded. "That helps with the macho thing."

Nathan offered a twisted, angry smile. "I remember you stealing Brenda Bailey's Barbie dolls at thirteen. You never did give them back. Got quite attached, right?"

"But I drew on them to make them anatomically correct, then made my own lesbian porn. The world makes no _sense_ , Nathan. All teenage boys should have dolls."

Nathan snorted, amused even though he obviously didn't want to be. "The point is, I have dirt on you, too, Crocker."

"I would _never_ demean your artistry," Duke avowed, then quit the theatrics as a thought struck. "Does it ever freak you out that we know each other this well?"

"Constantly."

"No, I mean..." Duke stopped him with a hand on his chest, prompting a wince, and withdrew the hand sheepishly. "Sorry. These guys. They're _us_. They should be the easiest tools in the world to find. So why are we bumbling around coming up empty?"

"We're not 'evil versions of ourselves'?" It was cute how Nathan managed to frame that phrase with such distaste. He narrowed his eyes on Duke. "I still say that terminology needs looking into."

"Because you think I'm _actually_ evil?" Duke prodded, exasperated.

"Something like that."

"So it should be easier for me than you."

" _Duke_. I'd _never_ assault Parker. I can't even imagine what pieces of me this copy's missing. Quit wasting time. We've your damn boat to check." He rounded Duke and made for the car.

"Nathan, _stop_ ," Duke urged, close to laughing at the impossibility of the Wuornos stubborn streak. "What I'm trying to say is, I'm proactive, right? _I_ know I'm not going to be waiting some place any fool knows I'd go to. I'm not going to be waiting at all. Forget the _Cape Rouge_!"

Finally, he'd got Nathan's attention. "Where, then?"

"...Unfortunately, that part doesn't help us so much. I've a dozen -- more -- hideouts and contacts in town and could've used any one of them. Not that finding out will help, 'cause I'm not gonna be there anymore. Damn, I wish I wasn't so twisty and devilishly cunning." He ignored Nate's eyerolling. "Okay... We need to think about endgame. Apparently what Evil Me wants is Evil You. It's like one of those _Star Trek_ episodes where everyone's suddenly evil and bi." 

Nathan met that with a strange look, which Duke's brain glossed over. "We don't know where Evil Me is."

"Nor does Evil Me," Duke conceded, and deflated a bit. "And _you_... you're only the _Police Chief_ , and even if everyone in town doesn't know you -- which is a big 'if', by the way -- wave that badge and you've nothing _but_ access. Both of us could be literally anywhere."

They paused quietly a moment, Nathan half in the driver's seat and Duke hanging in the frame of the passenger door. 

"No," Nathan said, lifting a battered hand to jab the air. "You're right, we know what they want, and that's our starting point. Even if I'm... he's... not actually going after Parker..." He averted his eyes. "It has to occur to... you... that it's the place to look." His expression changed, and Duke _knew_ that one. It was the look of some crazy Nathan-plan brewing, and he was getting that familiar sinking feeling already. "I know how we can flush him out."

***

They'd barely got back to her car before Audrey's cellphone rang. She listened to Duke, but was so distracted by the implications of Nathan asking Duke to ring in his proxy that she missed half of what was said. "Wait. Nathan wants to what?"

"Be a stalking goat." Duke's summation wasn't altogether helpful. "Literally. Okay, maybe that doesn't make any sense, and I emphasize here that this is not my plan."

In the background, she heard something that sounded like, " _If you're going to be like that about it_ \--" and then a scuffle. She sighed and waited, tapping her fingers on the phone and rolling her eyes to Dwight. A moment later, Nathan said in her ear, "I figure it's the best chance we have to draw out Duke's copy. I stalk you, pretend to be the other me. Duke stalks me -- both of him, hopefully, only ours will be ready to spring the trap. If we happen to catch the other me in the process, all the better." He paused. "And that part where I just called Duke 'ours'? I'll deny that ownership and all responsibility that comes with it."

Neither his attempt at horseplay or Duke's complaining in the background did anything to introduce levity. Audrey made an effort to muster her voice. "That sounds like a plan with a lot to go wrong."

"It's _Duke_. If you're seriously suggesting I can't handle it--"

Duke's inevitable comeback for that, too, was half audible in the background.

"Just keep in mind that if you get hurt now, you'll feel it," Audrey said, feeling an ache in her own chest.

"Tell me about it. Flip-side of that is he can't use my own blood against me anymore. I'm putting Duke back on now."

"Nathan, _wait_ ," she began, though she didn't know what she was going to say -- just that his voice was like stone and it hurt to listen to.

"Sorry, didn't catch that?" Duke said.

 _Damn it_. She determinedly tried to get back on the ball. "This plan. Seriously?"

She could hear the shrug in Duke's voice. "I don't have anything better. Sorry." It was uncomfortably close to indifference, and she could read his mind; if Nathan wanted to pin a target on himself, let him. But that _wasn't_ fair, and Audrey knew that she really, really should deny the part of her that was remembering his intrusive hands and all for letting Nathan pin that target on himself, too. It warred with the part of her that had wanted his touch and insisted it _was_ still Nathan all along. The struggle was royally screwing up her rational brain. She desperately needed to find some distance from the incident and _detach_ the acts of that other Nathan from this one.

More hesitantly than she wanted, she said, "Look out for him, Duke. Whatever he says, being able to feel again has got to affect his reactions, particularly after--" She was going to say _after Dwight's handiwork_ , but with quick consideration for the friendly Viking sitting next to her in the car, settled for a vaguer, "after earlier."

"Right," Duke responded gruffly. He sounded as conflicted as she felt. "You _haven't_ seen any sign of the other Nathan yet?" he pushed, concerned. 

"Not unless he's better at tailing someone than the original."

Duke almost gifted her a laugh, and she was aware of further low comments being exchanged between her two friends. "Right, Miss FBI." Another pause while they spoke more seriously. "He's getting a car from the station to follow you. Lucky me, I get the Bronco, which is going to be _real_ subtle, but I guess at least neither clone will expect me to be in it."

"Fine," Audrey sighed. "Pick up our trail back at the police station in half an hour or so. We're heading back there now to do some more digging on Liam's family."

"No luck yet?" 

"Not yet," she confirmed. "Catch you later."

She heard him mutter, "That's what we're hoping," as she ended the call. 

"Audrey..." 

She put the phone away, and as she felt a hand rest gently on her shoulder, turned into Dwight's intense gaze. 

"I couldn't help but overhear. You know, whatever happened between you and the other Nathan, it wasn't the Chief."

She let her shoulders sag as she disagreed and didn't bother trying to smile to appease his worry. "Oh, it _was_ him. That's the problem." She sighed and scrubbed her hands over her face, denying the sting of incipient tears. "Sorry. I guess saying things like that isn't... helpful to you guys. Since I'm immune, I don't have to worry about a double acting out all my guilty desires upon my friends. It's not fair for me to--"

"Audrey, stop." His face was kind. She'd never really had occasion to notice that before. Such a big, dangerous man, so how could his face and his voice be so gentle? "I doubt I've anywhere near as much to contend with right now. If you want, I can make inquiries on Liam when we get back to the station, and you can take the time to speak to Claire."

"Claire's busy." She shook her head. God, and apparently she was transparent. Then again, Dwight _wasn't_ the hairy barbarian his appearance suggested. He'd had a family, a daughter. She laughed weakly as it occurred to her he probably understood far more than either Duke or Nathan did about women. "I'll be all right. But -- thanks." She did manage that smile, finally.

He returned it tightly. "Seriously, whatever you're not telling us, Nathan wouldn't do it. I wouldn't attack Nathan. It doesn't matter if the thoughts are in us. Thoughts are... screwed up. There're _always_ thoughts. We don't act on them. That's what matters, right? What makes a decent human being. The piece Liam's duplicates are missing? It's a big, _important_ piece."

"Probably get that straight from their sociopathic little progenitor." Audrey patted Dwight's hand on her shoulder, squeezed it, and carefully removed it. She turned the key in the ignition. "Come on, let's get back to the station. I can tell you all about Duke and Nathan's not-a-plan properly on the way."

***

Audrey managed to contact the Andersons' cleaner, Annabel Dearing, and establish that Liam's father was away on business in Dubai, and that his mother was on a shopping trip and could be anywhere. When asked if she could come to the station and assist with their inquiries, Miss Dearing had reluctantly agreed, although she did suggest they might do better with some of his high school friends.

The kids in Liam's class they had available to ask were unwell or unhelpful, but Audrey made it clear to Haven PD's overstretched officers that she needed to question the kids who'd been knocked out just as soon as they recovered.

Her desk phone rang internally, and she picked it up, expecting Miss Dearing had arrived. Instead, Laverne said, "Got an incident you'll be wanting to take, hon." 

Audrey opened her mouth to say they had enough to focus on, and how was she possibly supposed to find _time_? 

Laverne, though, carried straight on with, "Beatrice Mitchell was attacked in her office down at the marina. She's asking for you. Well, she's asking for you and Nathan, but Nate's gone off the radar. I guess those scrapes this morning were worse than he claimed."

Audrey, with a pang, ignored the worried question in Laverne's voice. Nathan was busy... well, Nathan was out there somewhere, watching her. That wasn't so comfortable to think about, right now. Maybe they were _both_ out there watching her. She tried to focus on the other thread of the conversation, also alarming. One of the Troubled being targeted could be its own kind of trouble, and Beattie was also a friend. "Beattie? Is she all right?"

"Says she managed to get George Hopper to patch her up. Old Hoppy used to doctor for the Navy. She didn't want to give me any other detail over the phone. You taking this, hon?"

"Yes. I--" Audrey looked over at Dwight, who straightened up and took his legs off Nathan's desk, setting his clipboard aside and putting the phone receiver down. "I should get this. Tell her I'll be right over." Standing up, she grabbed her coat and hurried out of the station to her car, trailed by her Viking bodyguard, leaving a message at the front desk to make sure they asked Miss Dearing to wait.

Audrey didn't see any sign of Nathan on the drive to the marina, but guessed he was there. She had that itch between her shoulders of being watched. She thought she caught sight of the Bronco in the mirror once, far back on Main Street, but maybe it was some other blue car. She didn't know what Nathan was driving. _Either_ Nathan. A shiver ran down her spine, and she took out her phone as she stopped at the traffic lights.

"I'm stalking you. Don't phone me." His voice held a gentle, arch amusement that coiled warmly in her stomach, reassuring. The quiet humour was a welcome reminder of his more laid-back self.

"Sorry," Audrey laughed, but her own humour was still hollow. "You hear about Beattie yet?" Dwight had updated Duke already. She covered briefly why they were heading out.

"Damn it. Just what we need right now is another vendetta against the Troubled. Well, thanks for calling with the update. Go make sure Beattie's okay." He took an audible breath, and making efforts back toward a note of truce, offered lamely, "You know it's the first time I've had call to use the 'vibrate' function on this phone?"

"Kinky." She fell sharply silent, thinking about other things that unfortunate word choice brought to mind. He was still trying to muster response when she cut off the call. Dwight gave her the eyeball from the passenger seat.

They found Beattie in the harbourmaster's office. A weathered old sailor met them at the door with a hammer in his hand. which he lowered as he registered who they were. Inside, Beattie's desk was splashed liberally with half-mopped blood, and she was sagging back in her chair cradling a cup of tea in her right hand, her face pale. Her left hand was thickly bandaged but even so, more blood was showing through the dressing.

"Audrey, thank goodness." Beattie's eyes lit with surprise. "Dwight? I didn't know the both of you knew each other."

"Helping out," Dwight said, as Audrey wondered if there was anyone in town Dwight _didn't_ know. "What happened?"

"It..." Beattie looked apologetically across at the old fisherman -- presumably Hoppy -- who gave her a gruff nod and left. "It can't be right. I think it must be a Trouble, though I don't know exactly _what_... but I didn't want to just report this. I didn't want to just _believe_ it."

A light bulb clicked on in Audrey's brain. "Duke. It was Duke, wasn't it?"

Beattie sagged with visible relief. "Then you do know already... _something_ , at least. He... I thought it was him. He said he wasn't going to kill me, that he wouldn't even _hurt_ me, except that he needed my blood." Her voice shook. "He looked exactly like Duke, but didn't sound like him. He apologised, but it didn't seem like he even _cared_..."

"It's okay, Beattie," Dwight said encouragingly.

"Well, I thought..." The harbourmaster looked at Audrey. "I thought for a moment that this had to be revenge, because I almost killed him once, after all. Please, it really _wasn't_ Duke, was it?"

A sureness washed through Audrey at Beattie's words. Listening to the other woman's account of what she'd experienced, it seemed like Audrey's own half-formed jumble of thoughts were finally kicked into alignment. All of it had been far too entangled, far too personal, before. Dealing with it through Beattie's eyes, through Bad!Duke's actions, let the decision descend on her in a rush. "No," she said positively. "Of course it wasn't." _Of course it wasn't Nathan..._ "Duke wouldn't do that. He'd never hurt you. He loves knowing he has little Jean out there somewhere, even if he had fatherhood land on him in about the weirdest way possible. He certainly wouldn't hurt you for revenge."

Beattie sighed and smiled, putting a hand to her chest and making efforts to calm her breath. "I did the right thing, then. I knew it had to be something wrong. Is... is Duke all right?"

"He's fine." Audrey felt rather shaky, too, and forced calmness over herself. "He and Nathan are out looking for his evil twin right now."

"You said he was after your blood?" Dwight asked sharply. "Did he take any with him?"

"Yes." Beattie shuddered. "He was too strong. It wasn't normal. And his eyes changed after he cut me." She nodded at the table. "Then he mopped up the blood with a cloth. It seemed so ridiculous. I didn't understand. I still don't. What was that... that _thing_ pretending to be Duke? What's going on?"

Urgency scattered Audrey's last attempts at professionalism. She needed to warn Duke... and warn _Nathan_! "I-- I can't explain now. I have to go, but -- this is important. Really important. Thank you for calling us."

"And for keeping it quiet. We'll explain later. I suggest you don't go anywhere alone for now." Dwight briefly rested his hand over Beattie's still left hand, propped on the table. 

"No." She grimaced. "Ask Hoppy to come back in."

They slammed out of the door at a half-run. "You call Duke, I'll call Nathan!" Audrey yelled. Her phone was already rising to her ear.

Dwight opened his mouth. On the verge of a counter-offer, she thought, and it was considerate of him, given his own ongoing issues were with Nathan. But then he stopped and nodded, understanding clearing his expression. He jerked his head at Hoppy as they passed him, and took out his own phone, a compact model almost lost in his hand.

"Come on, come on," Audrey muttered. The marina was noisy, but Nathan's number just rang and rang, louder in her ear by far, echoing as hollowly as her racing heart.

***

The brief conversation with Parker had left Nathan sharply off-balance. What had _happened_ between her and his double? Was that... that _joke_ , or misspoken awkwardness, supposed to be forgiveness? Something else?

His heart thudded hard and fast in his chest. For once he felt as well as heard the fierce beat, as he fumbled his phone back into his pocket. In some ways, it was overwhelming, being connected to life again when so often it felt like he was watching things unfold on a screen, seeing his body touch, bleed, breathe, and feeling nothing. He needed to stop disappearing off into the _thump_ of his own heartbeat or the sharp, sweet sting of his cut up hands. There were important things to do, and this wouldn't last. Hadn't before, and fuck it, if Audrey had to leave to take the Troubles away, he'd keep his for life. There was no point indulging now just to torture himself with what he was missing.

It had been pretty strange pretending to be a duplicate of himself pretending to be the Police Chief to grab the unmarked car. Audrey had looked tiny and bright next to Dwight as they'd left the station, and with the sight of her, he was treated to a new perspective on a bunch of small reactions from his body. Not that he really needed confirmation that the advice of his dead dad had come too late -- he had to confess that much to himself.

It was also a reminder of how invisible his own body was to him. The world had an incredible textural complexity and he was living half a life. Inconveniently reawakened, it was a battle to focus on his hands on the steering wheel, the road in front of him, and not losing sight of Parker in her little car. Perversely, it had been easier to keep his grip when he'd had Duke's company and incessant talking to hang onto.

He hadn't managed to spot Duke following him by the time he turned off the marina and parked up at the back of some sheds out of sight, but then Duke was a sneaky sonuvabitch, and it might as well work for them for once. Except that it could also be working _against_ them. Nathan grit his teeth. This situation was of the confusing sort that happened _only in Haven_.

Nathan climbed out of the car and turned from closing the door to find flat silver eyes inches from his. "Hey, Nate. It's been like chasing around in circles. Still, kind of fun." 

Bad!Duke had appeared out of nowhere. Nathan ought to have given more thought to how, in _fishing_ , things did not traditionally go well for the bait.

Asphalt crunched beneath his shoulders as the copy deftly tripped and knocked him flat. His filters processed the information as they had become accustomed -- veering perspective, the _whuff_ of their bodies hitting the ground. He heard Duke hiss, "You're _mine _... You were made for _me_ , damn it!" next to his ear.__

That statement was more dizzying by far than the fall.

Only on the ground did Nathan start to register the sensations, and groan at the creak from his ribs and the discomfort of the pinning weight on top of him. Duke blinked, sudden sharp interest alighting on his features. The silver of his eyes waned for a moment, then returned. Nathan tried to struggle and Duke put a hand on his chest and held him in place, absurdly strong. They'd expected him to strike, but hardly anticipated he'd be game-faced already.

"How are you doing that?" Nathan grunted.

Bad!Duke held up a blood-soaked rag. He squeezed it, and more of the red fluid oozed out and over his fingers. "Lots more where that came from."

"Beattie," Nathan said, with the horror of realisation. "You attacked her just for _that_?"

"Well," the copy said, considering, "I _am_ the evil twin. But... you're not, are you? You're the original, skulking around out here, all wrapped up in ribbon like a trap." Bad!Duke ran a finger down the front of Nathan's shirt, letting it duck beneath the buttons and brush over the skin of his chest beneath. It was the first skin contact he'd felt with anyone other than Audrey for years. An involuntary shiver ran through him. Duke stopped and peered at him in interest. "Hey, do that again."

Nathan heaved at his body with every iota of effort he could muster, trying to throw the copy off, but Duke's thighs flexed where they straddled him and Duke gripped his shoulder so tightly the bloody rag oozed Beattie's blood onto both of them. His silver eyes flared. Nathan felt his bones shift under the grip. A gasp of pain escaped his mouth before Duke's reaching hand could caress his cheek. 

Duke's hand stilled. "You're not Troubled." There was a hint of amazement in the statement. He eased the force of his hand a fraction, and his voice lowered to a soft purr. "It's okay, Nate... I was aiming for pleasure over pain, anyway, because I'm that kind of an awesome guy. Not gonna do anything that has to hurt..." 

Duke's hand traced the backs of his fingers gently over the line of Nathan's jaw, his throat, his lips, then he took Nathan's cheek in his whole hand, and rubbed little circles with his thumb. Oh, _God_. Nathan had done that with Jordan enough times. Had Duke _seen_ him do that, with Jordan? Of course he had. Duke was smart enough to know _how_ he knew Jordan's need.

"Duke, quit it." The shiver in his voice came from the pit of his stomach. He raised his free hand -- the other arm was still pinned, even more numb than usual by now -- and pulled at Duke's wrist, trying to force it away. It was like trying to move a truck, and as a method of avoiding skin contact had its obvious drawbacks.

"I _asked for_ you," Duke said. "You keep turning away from me. You... Audrey... You nearly left me last week. I didn't like that, Nate... And you can give me those half-assed pleas, but I _know_ \-- well, you don't really _plead_ , mostly you just sound cross. It's like the way you only have so many facial expressions -- but no, now, I know _I_... I don't have to listen. Best part of being a duplicate. This whole guilt-free business is _awesome_. And, fuck, you can _feel_ me. I've seen it with Audrey, I know how this _works_. I know what you want, even while you claim you don't." He broke the grip on his wrist easily, turned his fingers inward, wrapping Nathan's, and pressed their clasped hands to the ground. He used the same ferocious strength and control to duplicate the effect with their whole bodies. Face buried in Nathan's throat, he started to nip and lick there while his hips ground down.

"Your evil masterplan is to give me a hickey?" The tremor and anguish in his voice as he was beleaguered by sensation didn't make that piece of bravado emerge quite as Nathan had intended. The pressure against his groin, and the mere reminder that that part of him could feel again, too, had him agonisingly hard in an instant. He should be fighting, but Duke had _super-strength_ , and Nathan couldn't come close to his usual indifference. He felt dizzy from all the sensation. His phone rang in his pocket, distant and tinny.

"You're loving this," Duke accused with delight. 

It wasn't as if Nathan could hide the heat between them. Duke let go of his arm to slide a hand downwards. Touch there, even through the fabric of his jeans, scattered his senses beyond coherent thought. It had been years since he'd felt someone else touch him sexually, and three since he'd even felt _himself_. Every small thing impossibly heightened, he knew that subtle tugging and shifting was Duke tackling the button and zipper of his jeans. 

"I'm... conflicted," he admitted. His breath stuttered, making his voice sound ragged.

"Mm." Duke ducked down his body. "C'mon, Nate, let's do this. I can make you happier'n Audrey can. You know it."

Nathan moved his numb right hand, surreptitiously. On anyone else, the limb would be useless for minutes yet, but he was used to over-dependence on muscle memory, gauging distances and angles to manipulate fingers he couldn't feel. Right... He almost _shot himself_ when Bad!Duke took a firm hold and yanked his jeans and underwear down to the crease of his thighs, with a flourish like a magic trick. Cool air washed against his skin, over his erection. 

"Oh, I like that noise. And, _wow_ , look at _you_ all ready to play." Duke tweaked his bobbing cock, causing Nathan to cry out and helplessly move up into the touch. "You're so much more fun than the other guy. You know, I _thought_ it would be the other way around, but that asshole just stuck some fingers in Audrey and ran off."

"He--?" The reference was like a cold shower, clarifying just what the hell Nathan was supposed to be doing and why. His phone finally stopped, only to immediately start up again. Duke didn't seem to care. 

"She didn't tell you that, huh?" Bad!Duke snickered. "What? Closer than you've ever been? I'll bet. Never mind. _You don't need her any more_. She'll leave both of us anyway. Let me take away some of the sting." He ducked his head, taking his smirk out of sight.

The mere brush of Bad!Duke's hand had been too much, and the moist pressure of his lips closing, while his hands curled around Nathan's shaft and balls, left Nathan unable to do anything but squeeze his eyes shut and groan, pushing up with his hips, normally dead senses on overload.

"Buddy? This is a public space. You do know just _anyone_ could walk by?" Not just anyone, though. Duke sounded thoroughly shocked. Among all the rest, Nathan hadn't been able to hold onto the thought that this was a trap, and the real Duke was going to be along to help close it, sooner or later.

The momentary paralysis abated. Nathan's eyes flew open and he raised his right hand from where he'd tucked it under his back. The gun wavered all over the place, and he only tenuously managed to set it to Bad!Duke's head. He nearly pulled the trigger as Bad!Duke _spoke with his mouth full_.

"Mf-mmh-mh-mf?"

"Get the fuck _off_!"

He popped up for air while Nathan was still reeling. "I _said_ , you know if you shoot there, you'd blow most of your dick off?"

"Does me no good most of the time." Nathan's reply probably came out rather manically, as he grabbed the blood-soaked rag and pitched it away from them. Bad!Duke's silver eyes had faded back to brown, a mixture of distraction and the blood on the cloth starting to dry. Duke snatched the back of the duplicate's collar and hauled him off, though not before he managed a last squeeze that provoked Nathan into a very unmanly squeak. Nathan rolled away, trying to keep the gun levelled but also trying to pull up his jeans.

"Nate," Duke said, helplessly. His eyes were wide and he couldn't seem to decide where they should go. Bad!Duke staggered and caught his balance, and straightened up, leering, a few paces away, which was still too close for comfort. "What the fucking _fuck_?! Nate, are you--?" He stopped like he didn't dare ask. "Fuck, I can't even -- I'm _sorry_."

His duplicate laughed at him. It was weird enough looking at the two Dukes facing off; had to be even weirder looking into your own face, grinning and soulless. "What?" Bad!Duke said. "I was only doing what you'd do if you had the balls."

Duke punched him hard enough to drop him on the spot.

***

Duke wondered if he'd broken a finger. Nate was looking at him inscrutably with one hand holding up his jeans, though his modesty was... still poking out of his fly. Duke's head filled with a sea of blasphemies. Seeing his double all over Nathan, aside from being the most freakish thing he'd seen in his _life_ , had somehow elicited a physical reaction from him that he'd rather Nate didn't notice in the current circumstances. He supposed he had to stop holding anything against the other man for what had happened with Audrey.

"He out?" Nathan said, curtly, into the very embarrassing moment.

Duke kicked... himself. Hard. "Think so. Look, if I offer you a hand, are you okay with that?"

Nate didn't answer immediately. Dubiously, he holstered his gun. His face went very red as he noticed his agape state, and he made efforts to holster that one, as well, though he had all kinds of trouble trying to fasten his jeans. He rolled unsteadily over onto one knee, trying to get the leverage to rise, and did, at that point, finally accept Duke's half-offered hand. He stood looking at his palm with a mixed expression after Duke had let go. "...I've felt no one but Audrey in so long."

He said it pretty flat, but even then, it was impossible to miss the void behind it. Even when he'd had that day's reprieve, he hadn't exactly gone around grabbing people, had he? Things, sure.

He looked at Bad!Duke, flat out on the ground, and sort of flinched. "I couldn't... That felt... Damn it, _bait_ ," he said disgustedly. "Next time, _tell me_ it's a bad plan."

"Well, I did," Duke hazarded. "But it worked... Shit, I don't know if I should apologise or go throw myself off a bridge. But you're okay, right? You're okay?" The anxiety sounded way too bald in his voice.

Nathan's face screwed up, and _again_ with the not-answering, and Duke, tired of this game, grabbed his hand back at the same time Nathan decided to speak.

"I don't even--"

"Nate--"

Duke held that hand in both of his and squeezed it like it was the most important thing he'd ever held, gun calluses, rough edges and band-aid across the palm and all. Nathan shut his eyes and every part of him seemed to focus down into the touch.

Fuck. What was this?

"When I first found I could feel Parker," Nate said. "I wanted to--" He jerked his chin down to the point of contact, though his eyes were still shut. "Hoped, when she found out--" His smile was wry on his lips, but Duke had never seen anything like the brilliance of it reflected in his eyes as they flicked open.

He wasn't talking about anything more than this, either -- holding hands. No wonder he'd not been able to cope with everything Bad!Duke heaped on him. Crap, this was pathetic, the two of them standing here like-- But somehow, Duke stayed still and silent and let Nathan hang onto a shred of human contact. Audrey Parker was remarkable, resourceful, and unparalleled, but in many ways she was also as standoffish as Nathan, and a pretty lousy choice to be anyone's sole option at human touch.

Eventually, Nate drew a shuddering, long breath and shook his fingers free. "Doing this all day wouldn't make a difference. Still wouldn't be enough. Still be gone tomorrow."

He took out his cuffs and went to Unconscious!Dickhead!Duke. He winced as he knelt and wrenched both of That Guy's hands behind him and cuffed them securely. 

Yeah, probably should have been doing that instead of the hand-holding. Duke eyed his palm. A little of Nathan's blood from a cut had marked it, near where his middle knuckle was swelling from that punch. It stayed there, just a red smear, not doing anything remotely troublesome. He clenched his fist, squeezing harder when it hurt. If they could only let these guys keep both their curses for good...

But his eyes fell on the red-soaked cloth his asshole twin had been carrying around. This bastard had cut up Beattie to use his fucking superpowers, so no, he was not allowed to keep them if he couldn't do it responsibly.

"Give me a hand to put him in the car," Nathan said.

 _Oh, right_. "Your truck's around the corner," Duke offered. "I can go and get it."

It crossed his mind fleetingly that it was kind of a waste. He was still hard, and Nate, well, he was trying to bore a hole through the front of his jeans, and the window of opportunity for him to explore the benefits of sensation might be depressingly short. Duke also got the sneaking suspicion Nathan hadn't hated it when a person who looked just like Duke had pinned him down and tried to fuck him. He _should_ be making more of a fuss about the assault. Clearly he was loopy from sensory overload, and Duke's thoughts of a moment ago, they were bad, no-good, horrible thoughts, and Nathan had been right: they did need to re-examine their definitions. He didn't get to be called 'good Duke' when he had thoughts like that.

Maybe he ducked out rather too eagerly to go get the truck, but it seemed only decent to give Nathan a few minutes to take care of matters. _Three years_ , he reminded himself, and the guy couldn't even feel his _own hand_.

Standing at the side of Nathan's Bronco, he took out his phone and was surprised by a bunch of missed calls. Shit-fuck- _dammit_ , Audrey had to be going out of her _mind_. After Dwight had called him, he'd known it was time to screw the covert operations and caution, and just get to where Nate was, _fast_. Audrey had called after he was already on his way saying she couldn't get through to Nathan, and... yeah. He guessed Chief Wuornos had been too busy getting ravished to answer his phone at the time. "Hey. Audrey, Audrey, I've got him."

"Duke! Where are you? What's happening? Nathan--?" 

"Audrey, chill," he spoke over her panicked questions. "I just came from him and he's -- fine." Ish. "We're one down, one to go on the duplicates." He listened to her puff out a breath of obvious relief, then he pressed, "Is Beattie gonna be okay? I cannot believe that bastard was using her _blood_." Mother of his _child_ , after all.

"She's going to be fine," Audrey said, her voice starting shaky but gathering strength. "He scared her and cut her on the arm, but she's tough. We know that."

"No shit." Three childbirths in three weeks. "Damn it, he did that _wearing my face_. I feel like... I don't even know." But he wished he hadn't given Nathan such a hard time.

"She... knows it wasn't you." Her voice went oddly soft, then her words stumbled in her haste to move on. "She's as familiar with the Troubles as we are, remember? What happened with Nathan?"

His gut churned unpleasantly at the reminder. "Bad!Duke, um, jumped the bait pretty literally. Practically unmanned Nathan on the spot. I don't know if that helps any after earlier--"

"Duke!" she exclaimed, dismayed.

"--But _I'm_ more inclined to go easy on him now I know what it's like from the other side."

"Is he--? Are _you_ all right?"

"Other than the images that may never leave my nightmares? You know what really sucks?" With an effort, Duke tried to dredge forth a laugh. "There isn't an evil version of Audrey Parker out there to complete the triangle and molest _me_. I hope you realise you may just have to fill in. Unless we get the balance of this sort of weird, circular sexual retribution thing right, we might never be able to move on."

"Funny," she told him. "But there are already too many other versions of me. I'd like to talk to Nathan."

...Of course. "He's... taking care of something that came up."

"What does that mean?" Her suspicion prodded him. "I can hear the smirk in your voice."

Hell, he was no one to shrink away from the facts. "It means I at least hope that Chief Wuornos is snatching a few minutes to make the most of a return to the world of sensation. Hey, we all do it, you know. Even that uncompromisingly righteous ass has needs." Then again... "Actually, knowing him, he's probably just pacing and studying the concrete."

"You're awful," she replied. "It's hard to believe there's a _worse_ version of you out there. Tell Nathan he can't hide from me all day."

"We're bringing the less charming version of me back to the station now. Any sign of the other Nathan?"

"Not from here. Maybe I wounded him more seriously than I thought."

Duke grunted, unconvinced. "I am gonna pound that kid a new face when we find him." He paused. "Sometimes, we get talking and I forget that you're a cop. Pretend I didn't say that."

She laughed, the relief in her voice heartening. She definitely sounded improved from earlier. "See you soon."

Pulling the damn awkward brick of a truck into the secluded spot at the back of the marina, Duke found its equally awkward owner leaning against the unmarked cop car with Bad!Duke handcuffed in the back. He couldn't tell if Nathan had made any attempt to take care of business, and Duke felt he probably shouldn't make staring at his friend's crotch a major pastime. His eyes kept gravitating that way whenever he looked at Nathan, anyway, so he just tried not to do that.

"Took your time," Nathan commented. It was almost a relief that he was back to his usual dry self. Whatever else, he'd taken the opportunity to pull it together and was rigid, implacable and broody again. Hooray.

They swapped asshole!Duke to the back of the Bronco. He was awake, sluggish but complaining mightily. "I don't sound like that," Duke said, leaning over his seat to address the source of his mounting irritation while Nathan started the car. At least one of the cuts on Nathan's hands was bleeding freely and had left smears in a few places on the steering wheel. "What I don't get, right? _How_ are you guys us? You have our faces and our memories but you say and do fucking shit we _never_ would. I _do not_ secretly want to jump and rape my friend."

"Duke," Nate said, warningly. He turned out of the marina and eased the Bronco up into town.

" _Jesus_ , I'm--" Duke flung up his hands. All right, he wasn't going to apologise again for the asshole copy. "Just so sick and tired of this Mirrorverse crap, alright? How come they're never embarrassed on _Star Trek_ , huh? I mean, what? Kira Nerys has clearly had the _entire_ Alpha Quadrant, male, female, and everything in between, and everyone takes it totally po-faced? Bullshit!" He crunched back in his seat, pissed and frustrated.

Nathan... didn't seem to give a damn. His mouth twisted in some sort of private amusement and he rubbed his neck. The action left a bright red smear of his blood.

Duke eyed Bad!Duke eying the blood. "Asswipe. Neither of our blood is going to do you any good right now." 

Bad!Duke had a smile that was as peculiar as Nathan's, like they shared some private joke. Despite what they all knew, he leaned forward and freakin' _licked_ the red smudge from Nathan's neck.

" _Shit_. Get _away_ from hi--" Enraged, Duke turned to shove his evil twin back in the seat, but froze, registering two facts: 

Nathan hadn't reacted to the touch. 

And Bad!Duke's eyes flashed silver.

_to be continued...._


	3. Chapter 3

This whole thing was creepy and ridiculous -- skulking around, stalked by an insane version of her partner, looking over her shoulder and in every corner, _letting_ Dwight shadow her like she needed the protection and comfort of his presence... And _yet_. Nothing could have kept Audrey this careful and this scared, except the knowledge that if anything happened beyond what had _already_ happened, she wasn't sure she could patch up her relationship with Nathan afterward. She was going to disappear soon. Ruining things with Duke and Nathan was almost the thing she feared most.

She had so _little_ time left.

pressed. She still had a replay of how Nathan's hands had felt on her body at inopportune moments, and it wasn't as though she'd never had those sorts of thoughts before it became reality. Just... why did it have to happen like _this?_

But this was Haven. Of course it happened like this.

She turned back to her bodyguard as she lowered her phone. He questioned her with a lift of his eyebrows and an infinitesimally small lip-quirk. Duke was right about the communication styles of Dwight and Nathan. Someone should write a thesis. Dwight's face was the more open, though: she barely knew what Nathan was thinking lately. "They've got Duke and they're bringing him in."

"Good." He shook his head. "An evil twin of Duke Crocker on the loose... Haven would be in pieces in a week."

She laughed, but sobered quickly. "He's not that bad. Even his double isn't that bad. We _don't_ have a body count, and with his Trouble... If these copies represent a drive to act out the original's darkest, deepest desires, now you _know_ that Duke's don't include going silvery-eyed Terminator on the Troubled population of Haven. He had Beattie bleeding and left her alive. He's not a killer, Dwight."

Dwight shrugged. "You might not want to put too much stock in what these things do. By that logic, what does that make the Chief?"

She flinched. "Oh, come _on_. That one's easy. Desire, self-interest, zero inhibitions... cause and consequence run a straight line there. I'd say I'm surprised about Duke and Nathan, but I have wondered what was really going on between those two. Nobody fights like that without something else behind the hate."

Dwight radiated manly discomfort and backtracked a topic. "Didn't know the Chief could feel you."

"No. He keeps it quiet." All that time he hadn't _told her_ , and she'd had to work her own uncomfortable way around to discovering and accepting how different she was. She'd tried not to feel hurt by that, because he was close-mouthed about everything connected with his Trouble. "Besides," she diverted, "I don't think that half of this really is Duke or Nathan's bad sides being let loose. More like them both being filtered through the attitudes and desires of a sociopathic, _idiot_ teenager."

She turned back to the notice board, where a list of names covered all the kids and the one teacher who'd been duplicated at the school. The majority of them were crossed off. She acknowledged that the flaw in the plan of working from a list of unconscious victims was that if anyone had been taken away they'd slip the net. But there didn't seem to be anyone they'd missed out, now that everyone was more or less able to answer questions and help them trace who had been affected and who was still on the loose.

The duplicate of the teacher who had beaten two of his most disruptive pupils bloody with his bare fists was just one of the disturbing incidents they'd had to deal with. "When I get hold of this kid, I want to give him the hiding of his life," she admitted, fingering a photograph of one of the victims.

Dwight said, "I'll help."

There were five of them left after Audrey crossed Stan's latest collars off the list. The most recent two had been found making out in a storeroom of the evacuated school. The girl was fifteen and it didn't sound like there was much the kids hadn't done, but they were copies, and Audrey _hoped_ that meant the problem would disappear just as soon as she got hold of Liam Anderson's mirror.

She wrote the five names onto a piece of paper and stuck her head out of the door, catching Stan taking a moment to inhale a coffee. She held out her new list. "Can you find out if these kids are here, and if not, get the hospital to check if they're awake and let me know? They're the last ones. Sorry. I know it's the first stop you've had for breath." 

"No problem, Audrey," he said, glancing at the list and smiling tiredly. "Adrian Frazer's here. He's the one whose parents... well, you can hear them."

She'd been blocking out the shouting. The place had been noisy all day, with interview rooms full of insane high schoolers. Claire had brought in help from the Freddie and admitted several of the duplicates, some under sedation. There weren't enough cells. 

"Thanks, Stan." Audrey ducked back inside her office to pick up Dwight, and they followed the noise. She should feel safe in a police station, but it was chaotic enough that anything could happen, and nobody was going to check Nathan if he strolled calmly through the main entrance. Meanwhile, they were still barely managing to keep a lid on this trouble by keeping duplicates and victims apart and implying that one of the students had planted a dangerous hallucinogen in the A/C system.

They'd picked up Bad!Duke, she reminded herself. That was one less worry on her mind.

"I think that's him," Dwight observed, with a little _too_ much deadpan, as he pointed out the red-faced man demanding explanations for what had happened at the school and bemoaning the half-assed police response to it.

"Great," Audrey muttered. "Today is the gift that just keeps giving."

It took a while to calm Mr Frazer down. It took longer to persuade him that interviewing Adrian would help the police to deal with the crisis. They relocated back to Nathan's office to conduct the interview, both because the police station was bursting at the seams and because getting formal about this didn't seem like it would improve the parents' moods. Mrs Frazer hung in the background with her arms folded, as she had done throughout, but she had persuaded the disruptive father to go and let the cops make him a coffee and show him somewhere to sit down quietly for a while. 

"So, do you know Liam Anderson, as a school friend?" Audrey quizzed, and the kid squirmed in his chair. She pointed out, "He's in your class."

Adrian shrugged and winced. Ah; the headache. Duke, Nathan and Dwight had all mentioned that it was a doozy. Being Xeroxed put stress on the original body. "No-one really knows that dude. He comes in, wears black, plays his shit music--"

"Adrian!" his mother interjected.

"Well, it is. That Goth crap. All vampires and supernatural heebie-jeebies. He's a freak."

"Was Liam bullied?" Audrey asked. Was this a campaign of revenge?

Adrian snorted. "No way. The guy's a _dick_." He cringed again from his mother's frown. "He is! He cut someone on the first week of school just for dissing his hair. He wears a knife around his neck, on a chain? Says it's religious so the school can't confiscate it." He backed down a bit, seeing Audrey's surprise. "It's a tiny one. I don't think they know he has it." His fingers indicated less than two inches. "Penknives would be scarier. It's just, Liam, you get the sense he'd _do_ it."

"So he's a misfit, but not a victim. Do you know who he does hang out with?"

"Sometimes..." He reeled off the other four names on her list. 

Audrey stepped out of the room for a moment, taking Dwight. "Well, that's interesting," she commented quietly, eying their interviewee through the glass. 

"What you said about these duplicates being filtered through Liam... maybe it's not so far off base," Dwight said.

"Well, yes, but I also think Adrian's not telling us everything he knows about Liam. Who've we got missing now? The four people in that school who knew Liam best and _this_ kid, and that's not suspicious? My gut tells me they had some kind of relationship."

They were distracted by a commotion down the corridor. Duke's voice, loud and irreverent: "Coming through!" Audrey's heart skipped at the sound of it. She spotted Nathan behind him, shoving along another Duke. The second Duke was gagged and staggering, half-dazed, and they were trying to keep his head covered with Nathan's jacket. Nathan's arm was slung over his shoulders, ducking him down.

"Parker." Nathan gave her a nod. His eyes were bright and intent. Audrey was glad he seemed better than earlier, especially since, from what Duke had told her on the phone, he'd gone through his own handsy-duplicate ordeal.

She managed something of a smile. "Isn't the gag cruel and unusual? He's you, after all, Duke."

Duke spread his hands. "You would not _believe_ how annoying this guy can be."

"I would," Nathan said. "Pretty sure she would."

"Sure, Nate. You know, actually, _I_ don't believe how annoying I can be. Audrey, you should've heard the stuff he was coming out with -- wait. _No_. No, you really shouldn't. Hence the gag." 

The trussed duplicate went crazy, thrashing around and trying to speak. Nathan shoved him against the wall and twisted his cuffed hands, prompting a fierce noise of pain. "Told you to shut up."

"Nathan!" Audrey berated, shocked. "Don't -- don't enjoy yourself too much." She reminded herself he might have a good reason for the aggression. They'd have to compare notes later, although possibly with Claire present. "Just because he's a copy doesn't mean it's okay to use him as a punch bag for all your grievances with Duke." 

Duke tipped his shoulder and smiled back at her. "It's all right with me. If he takes it out on that guy now, maybe that's a few less punches saved up for me in the future."

"Need to get him into a cell," Nathan said curtly. "With his Trouble, can't lock him up just anywhere. We got any room left?"

"We'll have to clear one. I guess we can't double up--" She coughed. "Too chancy if whoever's with him has a Trouble they don't know about." She waved over some help for them.

"We'll get onto that," Duke said, with unusual enthusiasm. "Come on, Nate. Come on… you." They dragged away the unfortunate duplicate. He kept trying to turn his head back to look at Audrey until they were out of sight.

She shut her eyes, winced and rubbed her forehead. Dwight was looking at her when she finally dared open them again. "Like that relationship needed any more weird complications," she said. "Right. We're... focusing on Liam."

They went back into Nathan's office, where Adrian and his mother had clearly been talking, because the kid's answers were a lot more stilted and the cuss words had all but disappeared.

"So Liam Anderson never did anything to you?" Audrey pressed. "I can pull your school records. Principal's probably over his headache by now." She dragged out her phone.

Adrian muttered.

"What was that?" Dwight's presence was really good for increasing the threat level in an interrogation.

"I said _all right_ , we didn't get along. I was standing next to the guy he stabbed. It could have been me. It was my buddy, instead. Liam's an -- he's bad news. If something's happened to him, I'm _glad_." He looked, in an instant, sure of himself and unrepentant. "I'm glad and I don't care. He deserves what he gets." And that, Audrey thought, was the truth.

"Okay," she said. After a few more questions, she finally let Adrian and his mother out to return to the father. "Don't go anywhere yet." She shut the door and turned back to Dwight. "We need to get Liam's friends down here. We need to know where they hang out and send someone to check out those spots. I don't know what the deal is with the other four yet, but I've a feeling that when he copied _that_ kid and his pent-up rage, Liam gave himself just as big a problem as he's given all the rest of us."

***

Duke was in a cell with Nathan smirking at him from the other side of the bars. He'd been in that situation before, on and off over the years, and he'd always thought Nathan was kind of a dick for being so squeaky-clean self-righteous about it. 

Bad!Nathan was _so much more_ of a dick.

"Told you before to get used to that view."

They'd uncuffed Duke's hands, but it was tortuous to peel the gag from his aching face. As soon as it was clear, he choked out, "What did you fucking pieces of _shit_ do with the real Nathan?"

Asshole!Nathan ignored the question and folded his arms. He'd changed his clothes to hide the fact he'd been shot, Duke realised. The jacket was very similar but not the same. He didn't look shot; he looked smug and healthy and full of fucking beans. Fucking Nathan's fucking Trouble, Duke thought, furious with himself for not noticing. Furious with Audrey and Dwight for being equally oblivious.

"Funny having all these memories of doing things that make no sense," Nathan said. "Didn't do me any good. Didn't get _me_ what I want. Guessing the other you doesn't have that problem. Self-interest was always your thing."

"Haha," said Duke, creeped out. He slammed his hands on the bars. "Get me out of this cell, you cheap knock-off! Why would you work with him?! Don't you know what he wants _you_ for?"

Bad!Nathan grinned. "Saw the end of the performance with the sap. We made a deal. He'll have that one. I get Audrey."

Duke's brain reeled with the idea. "You 'get' Audrey? We're talking people, they're not... possessions you can just pick up and _take_. _How_ is this us? That's _all_ there is? Strip us down to our core needs, and that's -- fighting and fucking is as deep as we get? That's crap! I don't believe it."

Nathan gave him a long stare. "Nothing means much if you don't feel it. Without that, might almost be dead. I'm tired of existing on these scraps of feeling alive."

"God, Nate..." Duke began, appalled.

The duplicate laughed in his face. "Don't worry. Even the stupid version of me never seriously thought about ending it all. Too many wrongs to right. Justice to serve, and all that."

"Fuck!" Duke made a grab for him through the bars. "Where is he? What's that bastard done to him?"

"Hardly been any time, yet," Bad!Nathan commented, critically.

"If either of you touch him, I'm gonna kill you!"

"Yeah. Funny. I thought you'd be more about the killing part, too."

"I'm a lover, not a fighter." Bad!Duke had slipped back through the outer door, grinning like a shark. Duke could not _believe_ he owned that facial expression. But Bad!Duke was the best sight Duke could have seen, right then, because it meant he _wasn't_ with Nathan. "I believe I've always maintained that." He put his hands on Bad!Nathan's shoulders from behind, lowered his face, and slid his mouth over the exposed curve of bare neck. He pulled away as Bad!Nathan turned, and played innocent in the face of a deeply untrusting scrutiny. When Bad!Nathan turned back, Bad!Duke winked and held a finger to his own lips.

" _Point_ ," Bad!Nathan announced, annoyed, and for some reason addressing Duke and not the copy, "I'm never going to sleep with you while I can't feel. That would be... Oh, yeah. You using me. Again."

"Why are you telling _me_?" Duke's head pounded from the self-inflicted blackjack and this was screwed up enough to make his head reel anyway. The whole idea of the capacity for _sexual assault_ being in Nathan, and in _him_ , made him want to throw up. He still wasn't fully convinced about how these so-called copies worked, though. Because he'd known Nathan a long time, probably knew him better than he knew anyone, and their relationship was intense, but not in that way. Surely it wasn't? He'd had the odd thought after Evi had dragged him into some experimental sexual scenarios involving other men (and other women, too, which was why he'd gone along with it at the start). He'd tested himself on how he felt about guys he'd met, who he might do if the opportunity ever arose. But most of his thoughts about Nathan over the years had been none too charitable. Certainly they weren't about jumping the guy and having his way with him.

The first thing _Nathan_ would do was punch his lights out.

Still, what else was on his mind, these days? Audrey, who'd said _no_ \-- because of Nathan, he'd figured, between the lines. Maybe the copy's fixation was as much revenge as desire. If he couldn't have Audrey, then Nathan was an acceptable target for his subconscious. Which would make him more twisted than he'd ever thought himself. Maybe he should just be happy that Simon Crocker's legacy hadn't gotten a hold on his base desires. It was at least nice to know his reaction of _Get that shit away from me_ ran so deep.

"You seem to be having trouble processing," said Bad!Duke, running his hands along the bars. "We should leave you to it." He slung an arm around Bad!Nathan's shoulders.

Bad!Nathan broke his grip and stride, and grabbed his collar with understated violence. "You're stronger, but _I can hurt you_. Remember that." He let go and straightened Bad!Duke up again with a few very quick touches. "We need to act normal. Asshole."

"Trouble in paradise?" Duke cracked, but Bad!Duke only joined in with his laughter. As they opened the outer door, the noises of the police station rushed in. Duke hollered as loud as he could, but Bad!Nathan raised his eyebrows, and _he_... waved at himself, and then they were gone, shutting Duke in and leaving him alone in his cell to _go insane_. 

He did that for a while, yelling until his throat was hoarse, and bruising his hands against the bars. Then he flopped on his ass, too expended to even move to the bench, and thought about Audrey, unknowing, at the mercy of those two guys.

That got him up again, tearing at the bars until his hands bled, uselessly. Even if he'd still been Troubled, his own blood didn't seem to do anything.

Dwight walked in on him and stared with that pained, WTF expression Dwight had perfected. "You need to calm--"

"I am _not_ the copy!" Duke fumed. "The guy who brought -- the _asshole you just left with Audrey_ is the copy!"

"Sure," said Dwight, with crazy-making patience. 

" _Yes_. Yes, I _am_ sure," Duke snarled, and grabbed for him through the bars. If he could make Dwight bleed... well, it wouldn't do anything, but that would prove he wasn't the copy. The _copy_ was Troubled. Unfortunately, Dwight stepped back and avoided him, and in retrospect that move probably did not inspire him to trust.

"Your blood," Duke panted, trying to explain. "On me. Prove it. You can _prove_ I'm not the copy."

"Because I'm stupid like that," the big guy said evenly. "Bleed on you, activate your super-strength, watch you punch through the bars?"

"No. _That's not me_! And you need to listen, Sasquatch, because I don't know what they did with Nathan, and they're both with Audrey right now." He made it verging on a question, but Dwight's reaction was confirmation. "Shit! I can't believe you left her with them! Get back to her." He sagged against the bars, worn out. "Just go back. Trust me."

Dwight gave him an impenetrable study, then walked out. Duke wasn't wholly reassured, since the regular flavours of both he and Nathan had singly taken the guy down before, but it had to be better than nothing. Then, Dwight returned a few minutes later, carrying a crossbow. He put it down to draw a knife from his boot, sliced the palm of his hand, and gestured Duke back. He swapped the knife for the crossbow, walked to the bars and clasped his cut hand around one, then stepped away and levelled the weapon, jerking his chin. "Go ahead."

Duke wiped up the blood with his own palm and held it out, displaying the massive amount of nothing that happened. 

There was a pause where Dwight seemed to not really know how to react, until he swallowed and said, "Damn. I was hoping you were lying and I'd get to shoot at least some version of you."

" _Audrey_ ," Duke said fiercely, clenching his fists and barely containing himself, while Dwight fished out the keys.

***

It was dark and Nathan could hardly move. Under his normal circumstances, he might not have the first idea where he was, nor what was happening to his body. Even now, he had lived long enough without input from his skin that it was difficult making sense of what he could feel in the absence of visual cues.

Pain loomed large. It concentrated around the side of his head, eclipsing Dwight's earlier damage and the lesser pain in arms twisted and tied behind him. There was a warm, sticky dampness, again at the side of his head, but also at his wrists where ropes had scored open earlier cuts. He was lying on a hard surface with some kind of bristly carpet pile, twisted up with his shoulders bowed and knees bent by the confines of the space, and that position was starting to induce other wholly unfamiliar sensations in his muscles. When he tried to blink his vision clear, something brushed his eyelids and impeded his lashes, indicating the darkness wasn't all a part of the environment. His mouth was blocked, cloth pulling at his lips and forcing back an obstruction that might have choked him, unknowing, if he'd still been numb. The rag they'd used tasted awful and thoroughly stopped his voice. On the plus side, unconsciousness had dispelled his arousal.

The sensation overwhelmed him, and after the first rush, he tried to step back from it, to focus on the senses he was used to and pretend, just for now, that feeling in his body hadn't returned. 

He took in the smell of blood and gasoline, and fainter, Haven P.D.'s preferred industrial brand of upholstery cleaner. Listened for, at the edge of hearing, the noises of the sea and sea birds and shouts of dock workers. 

He was in the trunk of his own unmarked police car, and it was still where it had been, parked at the back of the marina.

Somehow, this was Duke's fault, if only because most things in his experience ultimately were. He'd figured out elaborate flow charts to prove it scientifically, once, though he'd been thirteen at the time.

This was twice in one week, and even if he didn't remember the last occasion, it didn't befit the dignity of a Police Chief to be spending this much time stuffed in a trunk. Being dead at least made a better _excuse_.

This was _not_ happening. Nope.

He stubbornly pulled at his bound wrists until the pain whited out everything else, waited for his senses to realign, then did it again. His duplicate must have done this: the tension of the ropes wasn't quite right, like the hands which tied them hadn't been able to judge it properly, and had accommodated for the deficit with more loops and more knots. He'd never been any good at tying knots. Unfortunately, he'd never been any good at untying knots, either.

But the blood was slick, and his hands were thin, and he'd broken and dislocated enough in the past that they were a lot more mobile than they ought to be. That discomfort joined the rest. Newly opened to sensation, it seemed his pain threshold ought to be lower, but the feelings were so alien and it was so novel to feel them at all that while he might have to pause often to work his way back from distraction, the sensations were no deterrent against leaping back in. Audrey's touch had been as intense. Duke's touch-- hell, but before he risked getting _too_ romantic, the brush of his own fingers across the stubble of his chin had also been incredible.

He managed to hook a loop of the rope over some projection in the dark and started pulling in earnest, grunting into the gag with each livid explosion of pain. He felt heat start to build again in his genitals. With the numbness that had plagued him gone, the agony in his hands was at least sensation, pure and clear and _there_ , and it was as if his natural reaction of physical outrage in the face of damage had been inured, trained to not care whether the pain receptors were back online or not.

If they'd ditched him like this, he didn't know what they might have done with Duke. He'd been struggling a while now, and must have been making noise, transferring movement to the car, but nobody had looked in on him and he hadn't heard anyone close by. That suggested they'd ditched him and _left_. To come back for later. 

The duplicates were overconfident. He had _no_ plans to be around when Bad!Duke got back.

Seeing his own face staring at him in the possession of a grinning maniac had been a dizzyingly weird moment. But it helped distance him from what the duplicate had tried with Audrey, because that wasn't him, and couldn't be in a million years.

For all he knew, both of the clones had gone after Audrey while he lay here _useless_. 

His hands slid loose of the ropes with a jolt. He flexed his fingers until he was more or less certain they'd settled back to the correct shapes. Pins and needles were another delight he hadn't encountered in an aeon. A dull burn from his shoulders, locked into the unnatural position for so long, made his head reel as he brought his arms around to the front of his body.

He needed longer to come down from that. Longer, and the help of the arm he slid down between his legs, rubbing himself through his jeans with a half-numb wrist until the mercifully _very_ easy release sent sparks through his vision and his wrecked nervous system alike.

He wondered, panting for breath in the aftermath, if all this would normalise, given time, when the Troubles were finally over, or if he'd be stuck this way for life. His last brief flirtation with feeling hadn't been intense enough to tell.

Sliding his hands over each other, he couldn't check out the damage by feel, the more subtle signals lost beneath stickiness and rogue sensation. They finally recovered enough to work on removing the blindfold and gag. Today was still a better day than most for tackling knots he couldn't see. The fact they were his own knots made it easier, and he pulled the blindfold loose in less time than he'd feared it would take. The darkness got brighter, with traces of light at the seams of the trunk and bodywork. He could see shadows moving in front of his face as he worked on the gag.

_Air_. He'd absorbed the discomfort of trying to breathe around the obstruction for so long. It was an unbelievable relief to be without it. He swallowed and wet his dry mouth, running his tongue around the scarred tissue inside and discovering he'd bit his cheek when he hit his head. He coughed and croaked and managed a thready yell before planting his hands on the lid of the trunk so close above and starting to shout and bang in earnest, shoving at the thin layer of encasing metal.

Enough time passed to prove the approach unproductive. He poked at the inside of the lock mechanism, trying to trip it, and even took the belt off his jeans and probed with the long, thin spike of the buckle, but all it did was increase his frustration. He tried yelling again, then had a bout of thrashing and kicking at his prison as frustration and situation-induced claustrophobia took over. It near-exhausted him and achieved nothing, either. Then he started trying to take the rear seat apart from the back.

He had his hands buried in upholstery filling and enough light from the hole he'd made to see the outline of them by the time the lock mechanism clicked behind him and the trunk was hauled open from outside. 

Nathan rolled over, wanting to be prepared, but was blinded by the sudden brightness. 

He blinked up at... Stan? Who had a gun drawn on him and looked astonished. Nathan bet this had _never_ happened to his father.

"Chief!" Stan fumbled to holster his weapon and lend a hand. Nathan swung his feet out of the trunk and was reminded they were still tied. "How'd you get over here?"

That quick move hadn't been the wisest. Nathan held dizzily on to the frame of the car and steadied himself while Stan knelt and tore at the ropes around his ankles. "You saw me back at the station?"

"Well, sure. Talking with Officer Parker and Duke and the kid."

Nathan transferred one hand to gripping his head, trying to stop it falling off, which it felt like it was campaigning to do. Altitude wasn't helping that hit he'd taken. "That wasn't me."

"Chief? You feeling all right? You look like you need a hospital," Stan ventured. It must look bad, because over the years, Nathan's colleagues had pretty much been trained out of asking such questions. Stan pulled the ropes from his feet, and the rush of returning circulation took Nathan's senses away with it on a brief, wild ride. When he came back to himself, Stan was gripping him by the collar and shoulder, hauling most of his weight to keep him sitting up.

"Concussion, probably," Nathan said. "And I _do_ feel it, thanks."

Stan looked confused. Nathan thought about trying to get on his feet. "What kid?" he asked, blearily, thought processes slowly trying to tick over. "Stan, how did _you_ come to be here?"

"The kid in all the black, Anderson, the one everyone was looking for. Laverne reported we had a car missing, and it didn't seem like you to take it and not bring it back or let anyone know, but you've had a lot on your mind lately, Chief, and I was coming off-shift, so I followed the tracker here to pick it up."

"--Thanks, Stan." Nice that his men were looking out for him; not great that they were starting to feel they needed to. He backtracked. "The kid. They found him?"

"Nope," Stan shook his head, some cousin of amusement in his reaction. "Didn't need to. He walked into the station and handed himself in..."

***

When the officer manning the front of the station called through, Audrey had been poised to press Nathan and Duke for the story on catching Duke's double. It was going to have to wait, though. 

"Right. Let me at that kid _now--_ " Audrey's steps were fast enough they barely qualified as a dignified stride. She tried to retain her sympathy for the Troubled no matter what problems their abilities caused, but at this point, she was boiling with fury. That little ass had caused her partner to try and rape her. He'd caused _Duke_ to assault Nathan. When they finally found Liam's parents, she hoped they'd ground him for life. As it was, if she could swing jail time for the antiques store robbery and what had gone on record as 'drugging the school', she fully intended to. 

Duke and Nathan followed her more slowly. They seemed reticent, and she _was_ going to get the details on what had happened out there with Duke's double; this was only a temporary reprieve. 

They were greeted at the desk by the sight of Liam Anderson, bloodied and beaten half to a pulp. His black coat was gone, and he looked smaller and younger without it. One of his eyes was puffed up, distorting his face, and cuts lined his bare arms with a regimented precision that spoke of methodical cutting by someone. That he hadn't even pulled down his rolled up sleeves to cover the injuries spoke of how far out of it he was. He clutched a curved glass splinter, which she realised represented almost half his little circular hand-mirror. Blood daubed the glass and the fingers holding it. His pants were fastened askew, and from the way he moved, Audrey wondered if they needed a rape kit. The condition of the parts of his body that were covered was hard to guess: black didn't show up blood well.

It took her breath away for all of a second. Then Audrey drew her gun and levelled it at him. "Drop--" Damn it, they needed that mirror. "Put the glass down. On the desk. Slowly. _Carefully_." He did as instructed, his eyes spacey. Audrey drew out her handcuffs but it seemed... unnecessary. Nathan approached from behind Liam and set a hand on his shoulder that he barely noticed.

"I'm not gonna _try_ anything," the kid said, pulling together the threads of his cockiness. "You got me. Lock me up so the ones who're still out there can't get at me."

The desk officer was raising eyebrows. Audrey sighed and asked, "Can you call through and clear us an interview room?" She'd get Dr Lucassi and Claire over as soon as they could be spared. Sure, the kid was a mess, but they had plenty of people who'd been messed up worse today who hadn't _caused it_ , and she was damned if she was giving him priority over them.

"It's great," the kid slurred, leaning on the desk, "what your so called friends... what they'll do to you. I thought this was gonna be fun. It's not... fair..." He slid clear of his support and almost fell. Nathan grabbed him under the arms and kept him upright. 

"Parker!" he said, with a note of beseechment.

"Looks like he fell victim to his own Trouble," Audrey said.

"He creates the duplicates, but he can't control them," Duke agreed, with an unnecessary smirk. 

"Get that mirror, Duke, we'll need it," Audrey said tightly.

Duke pulled off his woollen jersey to wrap it around the shard without touching it.

"Thought it'd be a _riot_..." The kid moaned in Nathan's grasp. "Why would they do this to _me_?" He choked a sob and Nathan set him a bit more at arm's length.

Duke seemed to expand with confidence. "Not so brave now. Well, you little pain in the ass, your ability isn't going to work on any of us, so you spit out some answers." He grinned at Nathan. "Let's go crack him open like a piñata, Chief."

"Did I give you a _badge_ , Crocker?"

An unsettling feeling that had begun to stir for Audrey was assuaged by the semi-hostile exchange. "Duke! Not helping. He may be a pest, but he's a minor, he's injured, and we need to take this to the privacy of an interview room."

"Yes, we do," said Nathan, with emphatic agreement. His wrinkling forehead re-started the bleeding of a small cut above his right eye. Something about that cut bothered her...

The desk officer reported back, "Sorry, Chief. We're stretched to capacity."

They took Liam to Nathan's office. Audrey went ahead of them and covered any reflective surfaces before letting him enter, just in case, though it shouldn't matter for the three of them now. As he was brought inside, Liam urged, "You'll keep them away from me, won't you? I got two of them -- two at _least_ \-- but--"

If he thought she was going to sympathise with him... " _Mister_ Anderson," she said sharply. "I've spent today forced to hide from the monster you made out of my own partner, so please tell me you're not asking for _favours_. You're going to help us to fix this, you'll do it because you're actually sorry, and you're going to swear to me, right now, that you won't do anything so selfish and disruptive again. Or wasn't a taste of the misery you've caused everyone else enough?"

"Yes, ma'am," Liam stuttered, subdued.

She herded him into a chair, Nathan close at her back. Audrey said, "Really we need a way to dispel _all_ the copies. By the look of you, if you knew how to do that, you would have. Right?" She pinned his gaze until she saw confirmation there. "So we need to figure this out step by step. How did this start for you?" She'd thought Nathan was looming for the benefit of Liam, but as soon as she stepped away, he stepped with her. She could feel his breath, warm on the back of her neck. Memory kicked her in the teeth. That little cut... But, no, _how_? This was the real Nathan, it had to be. Duke had been with him--

She stepped around him and he half-followed, allowing a little more distance. Over his shoulder, she saw that Liam Anderson's eyes had widened, and sweat had broken out anew on his face. She passed him a hard look back. Yes, she knew, too.

"Nathan," she said, gripping his arm, high up near the shoulder. "Keep your eyes on him. This room isn't secure, and the last thing we need is to lose him now." She dug her fingers in, watching him not react. Further down, a little blood soaked through his shirt sleeve, slipping beneath whatever first aid measures he'd applied.

_I knew I'd winged you.._.

There was no triumph to be had in the proof.

Could she trust Duke? He was over by Nathan's desk -- setting himself in Nathan's chair -- and seemed markedly uninterested in Liam. He was smiling over at herself and Nathan. She recalled several moments in the last quarter hour where he'd struck her as... harsher than usual. No, she could not trust Duke.

_Then who was that they hauled down to the cells?_

_Shit_!

_Both_ of them. She'd been worried enough about Bad!Nathan fooling people at the station, earlier, so when it came to the crunch how had she _not_ considered that they might be walking right in? But she hadn't been looking for them working together. Not with Bad!Duke's ambitions for the duplicate of Nathan...

Bad!Duke had been a tricky and oddly sociable creation from the start, striking that deal with Liam. It sent a strange shiver through her to think that, with his pick of all the desires in the world, what he'd wanted most had been _companionship_. A version of Nathan that was _just like him_. 'The fun version', in his own words. It seemed so unlikely that he could have struck a deal with the Mirror Nathan he'd got, but then again, it also seemed that Bad!Duke had retained the silver tongue of the original... to a point.

"I understand," Nathan said. "We definitely don't want to let him go. Duke, have you still got that mirror piece?"

Duke held up his wrapped sweater and put it on the desk, tantalisingly in reach. It almost seemed like they were teasing her. Did they know that she knew? Or were they just being funny in the face of her assumed oblivion?

"I-I can't do this," Liam said, and tried to stand. Nathan took a long stride and pushed him down again.

"I'll cuff you. Only reason I haven't yet is I _know_ how hard I can put you down if you try anything."

"He's _itching_ for you to try something," Duke goaded.

The movement had given Audrey an excuse to draw her gun, to point at the kid. Was she going to do this now? Fear pulsed in her chest. What she _wanted_ was to run, to get away from them both. Losing this confrontation, leaving herself in their power, would be disastrous to everything she held dear. She'd risk her life any day, but she didn't want to risk her dearest friendships. Not when they were all she had in this world that was real. She could still get past Nathan's actions earlier -- it was going to be hard forgetting and forgiving, but she _could_ get past them--

There were too many people involved. The police station was packed to the rafters. She couldn't run from this.

" _Nathan_ ," she said, changing the direction of her aim. 

"You're bleeding, buddy," Bad!Duke pointed out, lolling carefree in the Chief's chair. "Hey, isn't that almost exactly the spot she shot your Evil Twin? Spooky."

She couldn't believe how much of a dick Bad!Duke was.

"Audrey," Bad!Nathan said, stepping forward anxiously, leaning so every fibre of his being seemed craned toward her. "I'm sorry about last time, it was rude. But now you're claiming you didn't have fun, and I know that's not true."

"Where are Nathan and Duke?" she asked, trying to cover both of them as she sidled to the knit-wrapped parcel on the desk. She had a bad feeling even before Bad!Duke waved his hand, _go ahead_. She pulled his bundled jersey in against her chest and backed away. Ideally she wanted time enough to shoot both of them if they moved. Whatever effects it would have on the originals, they'd figure it out. She _knew_ neither Duke nor Nathan would want this.

If this went bad--

"Safely locked away, for later," Bad!Duke said. "Look, _hey_ Audrey, sweetheart, it doesn't have to be a problem. Come on! Relax and kick loose... It could be a blast. You can't choose, don't wanna lose? The three of us... It's the perfect solution. Hell, even _he_ agreed to it." He jerked his thumb at Nathan. "Okay, so there are two of him involved in the equation, but yeah! The _three_ of us, we'll redefine this twisted little town! Hasn't Audrey Parker ever wanted to be a _bad_ girl?"

"Not that bad," she grit past her teeth, trying to unwrap the woolly bundle one handed, blind. At first she hoped she just couldn't find the shard within all the folds, but then she had to acknowledge that it was empty. Bad!Duke had pulled some sleight of hand. She threw the jersey back on the desk. "What the hell do you think is going to happen here? I'm going to run away to join your evil criminal Troubled threesome? _Quartet_. What reality do you _live_ in?"

"Maybe if you let yourself stop caring," Bad!Nathan suggested wistfully, "you wouldn't have to go away. All those people clamouring for your help, your special touch. Just say _fuck it._ "

"Yeah, fuck it," Bad!Duke echoed. "Screw them all. Too much responsibility sucks the personality away. Ask this one."

"Even if I would ever consider that," Audrey said, "I don't trust either of you like this. I want my guys. You're _not_ my guys."

"You see, you say things like _that_ and I can't believe the Audrey Parker we know and love isn't up for threesome action," Bad!Duke complained, the rejection sparking a nastiness in him. "It's just us, is it? You can't _control_ us, but you'd be fine with the versions whose balls you carry around in your pockets?"

" _Oh_ , you stay where the hell you are." Starting to get more than angry herself, she levelled the gun at him as he rose behind Nathan's desk. "I would _enjoy_ shooting you after that comment."

Bad!Nathan said, somewhat non-sequitur, unaffected by his cohort's passionate rage, "I'm fine if you want to be on top."

"Shut _up_." She was not _having_ this conversation.

"You would be," Bad!Duke baited. "Yet somehow, you manage to project this idea that you're actually a man."

Bad!Nathan turned and, with a smile on his face, slugged him harder than Audrey had ever seen him hit anyone. Behind them, Liam Anderson surged off his chair and shot for the door. In the circumstances, Audrey opted to focus on Nathan's copy. Bad!Duke, laid out on the floor by the punch, moved fractionally and groaned, while Bad!Nathan shook out his hand and spread fingers that were all kinds of mangled shapes.

"Well. What do you know," he said.

There was blood on his knuckles, but even assuming he'd activated Duke's Trouble, it clearly hadn't done Bad!Duke any good. Bad!Nathan pulled his fingers straight and, with innocuous fussiness, cleaned his knuckles on his shirt.

"Nathan," Audrey breathed, being very, very careful about where she aimed her gun. This version of Nathan scared the crap out of her, but she needed to avoid a kill shot. "Please. Stop moving."

He paused to say simply, "I don't mind. I know the rules. I'm here because of a Trouble, and once you solve it, this crazy moment of being able to do what I want will be gone. Duke's in denial; he thinks he can win. But I'm not playing the long game. I'll settle for what I can take right now."

She shot him as he closed in, the shaking of her hands disrupting her aim and caution. It didn't even slow him down. Faced with a Nathan who couldn't feel and wouldn't care if he lived or died -- who it seemed no amount of bullet holes would prevent trying to seize that moment of sensational high -- Audrey decided this time to follow Liam's example.

She avoided Bad!Nathan's first lunge, but he caught her at the door, slamming his hand on it to keep her in, pinning her to the wall again. She pulled the trigger against his thigh. He wrested the gun from her hand. They struggled together with different focuses driving their movements. He tried to pin her arms above her head where he could hold them with just one hand; caught one wrist. His other arm tried for her remaining hand, grabbing her elbow as her finger jab fell short of his eyes. She went for his neck and that fell short, too. Her clutching hand only managed to rip his shirt.

" _Duct tape_?" she asked, incredulous.

"It works."

Oh, she hoped _her_ Nathan wasn't so goddamned stupid to ever treat a serious injury like that. The duplicates didn't come with much self-preservation, but neither had the original. Recovering from her shock, she jabbed her hand at his injured arm, but he didn't feel it through the tape. He caught her remaining wrist, firm but not rough; nothing he did was intended to _hurt_ her. 

For whatever reason, he seemed to have convinced himself that _this_ wouldn't.

Audrey twisted and sunk her teeth into his arm, hanging on and worrying like a terrier. It might have been reflex at the unexpected sensation more than anything else that loosed his grasp.

This time, she wriggled her arm down between their bodies and brutally, desperately stabbed her fingers lower, into the gunshot hole in his midriff. He gave a startled gasp and folded. The quiet agony of the sound tore at her: it was _Nathan's_ agony, something she'd never heard before. It didn't keep her from taking advantage of the moment to get the _fuck_ out of that room.

She'd _seen_ the shard in Duke's hand, and the tentative way he'd handled it hadn't been a trick. He hadn't wanted to touch it at all. If he hadn't wrapped it, he must have left it hidden back at the front desk, and she needed to find it. Once she was out of the door, she turned and ran that way, barely looking in the other direction.

"Audrey!" She spun. _Duke_ \--

Panic blossomed. 

It was the real one -- _her_ Duke, beat up and dishevelled -- that had been _Duke_ , earlier, behind the gag -- but in one piece. He was followed by Dwight, who tugged Liam Anderson along by the collar.

"Think you lost--" Dwight started.

Audrey pointed at the door. "They're in there!" She spun away. "I'll be back with Liam's mirror!"

Her feet pounded the floor so hard she barely kept her balance as she skidded into the foyer of the police station -- where her heart almost _stopped_. 

There was _Nathan_.

Nathan, coming through the front door, shirt patchy with blood to the elbows from reopened cuts on his arms. Stan followed behind him. It was-- 

"It wasn't _me_ ," he said, forcefully.

"I know!" Audrey flew to the reception desk, and much to the alarm of the officer there, started tossing things aside as she searched it. 

"Parker!" She wasn't sure whether Nathan was outraged by her lack of attention for him or her untidiness.

"Duke had a piece of Liam's mirror! It's here somewhere. It has to be."

"Duke?"

"The other one! Help me look." She got down on her knees, checking under the desk. She tried to think back to what she'd seen Bad!Duke do, what he'd had _time_ to do. Nathan joined her, wiping his hands off as best he could on his shirt, then running them over the desk's underside. Stan and the desk officer watched them both with confusion.

"Here," Nathan said. His fingers pried at a tiny gap between two solid wooden blocks of trays that held forms and leaflets, which stood at the desk's corner. "There's something caught between."

"All right." Audrey drew a breath, hoping. "Get ready to catch it." Taking firm hold on the back and sides of the wood, she wrenched the closest of the stands aside. Nathan slipped his hand between and caught the shard, red-traced between silvery reflection. Too late, it occurred to her to worry what the blood of the _original_ did when brought into contact with the mirror. 

Apparently nothing.

"Let me." She held out her hands for it.

"You'll cut yourself." Infuriatingly matter-of-fact in his gallantry.

"Nathan!" Even if they hadn't had this conversation a thousand times before-- "You can feel!" Their gazes touched. 

Despite having seen him walk through the door and catch the mirror glass, despite leaving his alarming copy behind her with Duke and Dwight and those unmistakeable stains on his shirt from where she'd shot him earlier, a doubt surged through her. 

But _that_ \-- that lack of trust was par for the course between them, these days, wasn't it? What they'd had, it had gone. She'd lost it--

"All right." He smiled wryly and put both hands carefully on the shard. It was big enough for him to snap it in half easily. He handed her the bigger piece. "We'll share it."

"There's two of _them_ , after all," Audrey breathlessly agreed.

***

Duke ran through the Chief's door and straight into Bad!Nathan. "Two of you are even more annoying," the duplicate growled, a gun rising in his hand.

"Whoa!" Duke flailed out and barely managed to knock his aim wide. "The same back at you!" Bad!Nathan, apart from the actual bullet wounds, didn't _look_ like a guy with three bullet wounds in him. Behind him, Duke's own duplicate was picking himself up, looking sore and pissed. Duke let Dwight focus on _That_ Guy and wrestled with Bad!Nathan for the gun. The last thing Dwight needed was to be nearer the weapon.

Then again, the aggression with which he went after Bad!Duke was pretty scary. _Definitely_ just as well Dwight's copy had run into Nathan first. 

Duke was getting _really_ tired of constantly trying to stop various permutations of Nathan Wuornos from shooting him. "Where's Nathan?" he yelled at the duplicate. "What did you do with him?" He struck his elbow at the gut wound to no immediate effect.

"The car," Bad!Nathan said. "Alive. Maybe." He spread his hands, the gun held low and all but ignored. "Go check?" 

Duke tried to tell himself that even if Nathan's duplicate was reckless enough to kill his original, asshole!Duke wouldn't have let him.

"One drop and you're toast," Bad!Duke warned Dwight, dodging a lunge and hopping up acrobatically onto Nathan's desk. With focused nastiness, he kicked Dwight in the face, sending bright red flecks scattering from his nose. None of it went near enough the copy's skin to make a difference, and Sasquatch gave a growl that Duke would _not_ want to be on the wrong side of, as Bad!Duke tried to scramble away and Dwight caught hold of his leg. 

The gun in Bad!Nathan's hand could still cut that fight short. Duke really _hated_ fighting Nathan. Fucking pain receptors, man! "Liam," he grit through his teeth. "If you know how to switch these things off, then _get to it_."

"They did this to me! You think I wouldn't have got rid of them if I could? I only make them. They don't listen to me. You didn't!"

"That's because you're a dick. It's only a pity someone beat me to beating the snot out of you."

"You hit me!" Bad!Duke yelled across at Bad!Nathan, accusation and outrage in his voice. Seriously, what had the Anderson kid's Trouble done with his charm? The guy was red-faced and straining to break from Dwight to get at Nathan's duplicate.

"Are you sure you're me?" Duke asked. "Because you seem to have forgotten how he does that _all the time_." In the other guy's shoes, he'd have been paying more attention to Dwight, and Dwight's new ambition to beat one of him to bloody shreds. Sasquatch succeeded in pulling Bad!Duke's feet from under him, landing him ass-first on the edge of the desk. He bounced off and landed almost -- _almost_ \-- on his feet, where Dwight caught him by the throat before he could topple further. 

"You fucking hit me, you _bitch_." Bad!Duke yelled at Bad!Nathan, half-choked but still stuck on the same track. 

Despite everything else going on, Duke had been waiting for Bad!Nathan to make a move, and he was ready for it. Problem was, the duplicate moved in the wrong direction, _backwards_ , careening towards Bad!Duke, grabbing his shoulders in both hands and ripping him from Dwight's grasp. Some of his fingers twisted into wholly the wrong shapes. Duke, his stomach churning horribly, had to remind himself that it wasn't really Nathan.

"You want to call me any other names? Denigrate my manhood some more? Because I can't _feel_? You think I can't have sex, is that it? Or is it you think I could only _get off_ playing your _bitch_?"

Duke stuck his hand over his face and pinched the skin of his forehead. His head was _pounding_ , and now he just wanted to hide. Dwight leaned across and said to him in a low voice, "This is way more humiliating than mine."

"Dude, that's sick," Liam nervously snickered.

"Nathan's gonna kill me," Duke groaned, heart sinking already at the thought of reliving this conversation later. He'd forgotten about the freakin' Daredevil hearing, because with a growled, " _Why not?"_ , Bad!Nathan turned around to swing his gun up and squeeze off a shot square at each of them before anyone could move. His tight expression didn't change, and he swung back to Bad!Duke, who he still held by a misshapen hand twisted in his collar.

In that moment of echoing gunshots, a lot of things seemed to happen at once. 

Liam Anderson screeched like a little girl. Duke frantically processed the fact he _wasn't_ shot, unless Nathan's condition was catching, while Dwight groaned and sagged back with a wall-shaking thump, hands clutching his chest. Bad!Duke grabbed Bad!Nathan before he could bring the gun back around, ignoring the hand at his neck in favour of immobilising the weapon and tugging his fellow duplicate into a tight embrace. Bad!Nathan's fierce protest was muffled as Bad!Duke crushed their mouths together and then, pulling back, touched foreheads with him almost sweetly.

" _Way_ more humiliating," Dwight hissed, through obvious pain.

"Shut up!" Duke was still panicking. He couldn't see any blood on Sasquatch. A vest...? The big guy was wearing a vest! He about fell over in relief. " _Shit_. I thought you were _dead_ , buddy!"

"Thanks. You're a pal," Bad!Duke said to Bad!Nathan, his eyes silver from that little nick on the copy's forehead. The other duplicate struggled against him with increased desperation as Bad!Duke reached his hand down between their bodies. Duke belatedly realised it wasn't for a purpose that would invite further comment from Dwight -- _no_ , the sick fucker had soaked his sleeve in Bad!Nathan's blood, and when he turned around his eyes stayed solid silver.

He casually discarded Nathan's duplicate, shoving him away.

Bad!Nathan swung up the gun and fired it with a crazed focus, but he was falling, all the colour in his complexion gone, finally succumbing to the wound in his midriff. Bad!Duke was moving fast, and with Dwight right there, none of the bullets would connect, though Liam threw himself under a table. "Nathan!" Duke yelled in protest, as Dwight gave two more grunts of pain. It was still hard to remember that it wasn't _really_ Nathan, not _this_ time, who was sagging to the floor and looking for all the world like he was dying, and Duke's subconscious was having some fraught moments. Bad!Nathan slowly let the gun drop. He sat limply, rolled his head back, closed his eyes. " _Damn_..."

He was still breathing. 

The door slammed. Bad!Duke, Trouble in full force, had gone while Duke lingered.

" _Audrey_ ," Duke groaned. He pounced on the gun Nathan's duplicate had put down, and leaving behind Bad!Nathan and Dwight, who were too fucked to be going anywhere, and Liam, who he really couldn't _give_ a fuck about at this juncture, he charged after himself.

***

Running alongside Audrey, Nathan reached his office in time to see Bad!Duke charge out of the door, followed a few seconds later by Duke. It wasn't difficult to tell which was the real one. The first was silver-eyed, and paused when he found himself faced with Audrey with a gun in one hand and mirror shard in the other. It only registered then that Nathan was only holding his half of the shard and hadn't yet managed to pick up a replacement sidearm. Actually, that looked hell of a lot like his Glock that Duke was holding.

"Clear the corridor!" Nathan yelled, scattering the officers who were within hearing to grabbing the nearest non-HPD personnel and moving. "Everyone out! We have a situation. I want this area _clear_!" It was fortunate his officers were trained by, well, _Haven_ , to react even if they didn't understand. The last thing anyone needed was witnesses to this -- to _two_ Duke Crockers, and whatever stunts the duplicate was going to pull before they got this under control.

"Nice. That commanding demeanour, it's hot on you," Bad!Duke said, and, "Ah-ah." He held up a warning hand against Audrey's advance and his eyes flashed again. Nathan hoped like hell the copious blood on his sodden sleeve wasn't Dwight's. "None of us really know how fast I can move like this. You want to test it? Be my guest." He returned his smirk to Nathan. "You got out. Saved me coming for you."

Nathan clenched his jaw, not seeing that particular creepiness as meriting answer, not intending to give it one, but Audrey spoke up. "You really think this is going anywhere now? I thought _Duke_ was good at denial--"

"Hey!" protested Duke, then silenced, looking pissed. He was caught mid-step behind the duplicate, trying to creep up on himself. 

Bad!Duke invited without turning, "Go for it, you handsome devil. You think you can take me? It's your Trouble, so hey, you should know. Or, what? You'll shoot me? Shoot yourself? We both know our sense of self-preservation isn't having that. I bleed out, die... maybe you die. Hope Nathan's still okay in there. Who'd have thought you'd actually _shoot him_ , huh, Audrey? Knowing what happened to that kid and all."

Nathan was aware of Audrey eying him with concern. "I feel fine," he gruffly assured. To be honest, it was all too much of a cacophony, and he was hardly sure _what_ he felt. But he didn't _think_ there was anything there to suggest he was at death's door due to the connection with his duplicate.

Bad!Duke frowned at him. "Do you _know_ what you look like? You're the version that _feels_ , right?"

"Duke." Parker had a sigh in her voice. "You're in a _police station_. We have guns, and oh!" She waved the shard. "We have these, too. Super-strength, _boo_. You're not walking out of here. Some part of you knows that. Some part of you also knows that we need to either use this glass shard or get medical attention to that other Nathan if you want _this_ one."

"You heard him, he's _fine_... I like you," Bad!Duke told her, impervious to reason. "I _wanted_ you first, you remember that! But you're going to leave anyway! You'd rather push me away -- and _why_? Because you can't risk _choosing_? But one last chance. I'd still take you with me. Us. With _us_."

"With you where?" Nathan demanded, grimacing at the unwanted connotations summoned by the word 'take'. Maybe he should have play-acted being on the verge of collapse, but it seemed he'd lost his moment. "Today Haven, tomorrow the world? I didn't know you had plans for world domination, Duke." His gaze slid beyond the duplicate to the original, who mouthed denials and spread his arms: _who-me_? 

"Well, _I_ have super-powers," Bad!Duke qualified. "Which are kind of fun once you start to actually use them. You're just numb."

Duke, behind him, emphatically shook his head. Nathan rolled his eyes.

"Super-powers?" Audrey repeated, her voice saturated with the tone she used specifically to bait. "Oh, you have _super-powers_?" She laughed baldly. "I'm sorry. I do _not_ see you playing Captain America, Crocker."

Bad!Duke chuckled, clearly tickled by Audrey's manner of humouring him. "Doesn't have to be him. No, he's a stiff. If _Nathan_ had super-powers, now, that would be more _his_ line..."

Behind him, Duke was seemed to be trying to work beyond mortification to indicate something. Nathan twitched the hand holding the mirror shard, and Duke nodded and gestured frantically to himself.

"Okay... Okay, now, you're just trying to turn this conversation around to something nice, safe and PG rated, like the fucking Avengers..." Bad!Duke teased Parker. "Because _we_ don't have to abide by the Comics Code, and we _all_ know what the real issue should be. You and me and him. Naked. Don't care where. Right here works? Well, _maybe_ not here. Too many cops. Can't shoot them all, we'd run out of bullets."

Nathan jolted with shock. Bad!Duke was suggesting they...? That as a trio, they...? Duke had covered his face, missing his chance, even as Nathan tore his attention back to the shard. Audrey looked like this wasn't the first time she'd heard the suggestion.

"What _is_ this, really?" Parker asked, way too lightly. "Hedging your bets after we've both turned you down? Is it the only way you think you can get us, if you plump for both at once?"

"I want it _all_. Why settle for less?! Besides, I beg to differ--" Bad!Duke pointed savagely at Nathan, who resisted the urge to fall back a step. " _He_ didn't turn me down."

"Sure he didn't," Audrey crooned. " _Poor_ Duke. Always the one left out." She cracked enough to cast a concerned glance toward the real one.

The real Duke, right behind the copy, wore an expression like he'd sucked a lemon, and even Nathan had felt the sting of that. But Duke was at least looking their way again, now, and Nathan brandished the shard and mouthed impatiently. Duke swallowed and edged in closer to his duplicate's back.

"He _didn't_ ," Bad!Duke snarled. "'Rejection' implies use of the word _no_ , which -- really? I don't remember. Do _you_ , Nate?"

_..._ So much for distraction. Nathan tried not to cringe before the sudden attention of all... _three_ of them. "I was drunk on touch." The admission came out more breath and gravel than words. Audrey was raising her eyebrows at him, and there was a strange, startled blankness in her expression. Duke was... well, learning nothing new. Nathan felt his face burning fiercely.

" _My_ touch," Bad!Duke affirmed. "Good as _yours_ at the moment. You _see_ \--"

The mirror shard flew a silver arc from Parker's hand to Duke's. The duplicate turned his eyes from Nathan and toward the movement from Audrey, and Duke ducked in and slid the sharp mirror edge over the exposed skin at the back of Bad!Duke's neck.

Bad!Duke disappeared, but the triumphant expression with which his eyes had last pinned Nathan's still seemed to be hanging on the air like the Cheshire Cat's grin.

Audrey released an audible sigh of relief, which choked off into another breath, drawn in sharply, and she gasped a fearful, urgent: " _Nathan_..."

***

It could be her imagination that the real Nathan's face had taken on a grey tinge, but Audrey still worried. Her concern might have contributed to the scowl on his features as he incautiously slammed the door back and led the way into his office. He was still unarmed, except for one mirrorglass splinter, but none of them were thinking particularly acutely after all of that. Duke slunk after both of them, his shoulders hunched. Audrey wondered if Nathan and Duke felt as naked as she did, after the copy had reached down and wrenched up to the surface everything they'd prefer to keep unsaid.

In the Chief's office, Dwight was on one knee next to a Nathan whose breaths were coming in rasps, each one taking more obvious effort. Dwight looked up grimly as they entered. "I think he's on his way out."

"Nathan, the shard--"

He handed it over without comment. He was stone-faced as he regarded himself, dying.

But Audrey had seen Nathan Wuornos die altogether too many times.

"After last week, I can't believe you're doing this to me again." She felt her throat close up as she hunched down next to Dwight. Bad!Nathan reached out for her but was too weak to do more than set his hand on her wrist. The contact spread a smile across his face and cleared his blue eyes, briefly reanimating his frame.

"Parker," Nathan berated, behind her. " _Don't_ talk to it. We already have Duke's ravings to contend with."

"This is so weird," Duke muttered.

Dwight stood up and backed off. Audrey didn't have time to dwell on the way his eyes flickered over the three of them.

"Not 'it'," Audrey corrected, and shut out the derisive snort behind her. "He's you. Just missing some pieces. He has..." She gulped. "He has your _memories_." She allowed the hand to remain on her wrist. To protect the real Nathan, this one had to go, even if the associations hurt. She steeled herself and said, "You understand I can't let you die. I have to send you off." She indicated the shard, held at the moment unthreateningly where her hand rested between her bended knees.

She expected resistance, but he said, "This way, maybe I get another chance?" She was following his eyes as they slipped beyond her, to _Nathan_ , and so missed the hand he reached out of his own volition and folded tight around the shard. She felt his fingers, and the sting where the glass slid against her skin. Bad!Nathan vanished without fanfare before she'd turned her head back. 

Nathan swore behind her, disappointment thick in his voice. Audrey cast a glance around at him, poking his fingers then giving up in disgust, and she sighed and picked herself up slowly. She peeled the splinter from her skin and slipped it into a pocket, wiping the small amount of his blood and hers off on her pants. She thought of the other Audrey's face, blank without the memories that _she_ still had. That was three mirrors of themselves, now, that they'd broken between them, and maybe the numbers didn't _strictly_ add up, but she still had twenty-seven years of bad luck for her penance.

"Nate, I'm sorry--" Behind her, Nathan jerked away from Duke's consoling touch. 

His reasons were... double. 

"Damn it! I'm bleeding!" 

Audrey wondered dully if this experience was going to set back Nathan's issues over Duke's Trouble.

His wrench away from Duke and effort to look anywhere else locked his gaze square with hers instead. They both stopped. Audrey sighed. "Lately, it feels like I'm always watching you die."

Nathan said, stubbornly, "I'm still here."

"Audrey." The sharpness of Duke's voice surprised her. She turned and found the remaining shard of Liam's mirror delivered to her hand. "I'm going home. I need to..." He looked at anything but her or Nathan. "...Get changed," he finished lamely. He spun, leaving only a swinging door, and Audrey stood with her mouth open, shocked by his speedy exit. 

"Duke--?" The protest died on her tongue, bitter, leaving an ache in her chest. He was already gone. All those things she'd said… He did know not to take them to heart, didn't he? He had to.

When she thought about it, she was not really surprised he'd left. He wasn't a cop. He had the option to walk away that she and Nathan didn't. She sighed and rubbed her head. She would talk to him tomorrow.

"Audrey," Nathan said tersely. They exchanged a glance, and Nathan tipped his eyes minutely towards Dwight. Okay... _Dwight_ ; interested, trying not to be, eyebrows just about pinned in his hairline by now. Also, Liam had retreated into a corner with his arms around his knees, pretending he could hide from all of this. Of the duplicates, even Bad!Nathan's copious blood loss had left no remnant. That was... well, that was going to be a bonus in the clean-up, Audrey told herself, firmly.

"We need to start dealing with those kids." Nathan shakily wagged a finger at the shard in her hands, and she surrendered it back to him. "Beginning with a cell for Liam." He folded the finger, staring perplexedly at his hands cupping the shard, and seeming to realise anew that he was a mess. Why that shouldn't have been more obvious when he could actually _feel it_ , Audrey couldn't imagine. "Dwight, can you...?" He gestured at the kid, and went to his desk where he rummaged in the drawer until he found spare cuffs to toss over.

The worst was over, but they were far from done. There were still two or three kids left loose, according to Liam's statement, and they needed to be found and dispelled. A heap of work left to do coming up with excuses for the many eye-witnesses to this Trouble... coherent reports for non-Haven eyes... Audrey acknowledged with dismay that they were likely to be buried in this until midnight yet.

And where, in all of that, were the two of them going to be able to talk?

She grabbed for Nathan's hand before he could stride out of the room. "It's... all right," she said, the words meaning to reassure, but ending up all question.

He untangled his hand from hers, grimacing. Not because of her, she understood. But like last time he'd found his touch and lost it again, it was too soon. "Yes," he said, after considering. "If you're all right, it's all right." He searched her eyes.

Stiffly, determinedly, she nodded.

"I'm okay, Nathan."

Time now to put the rest of Haven that way.

***


	4. Chapter 4

It was pretty fucking late and Duke was-- well, he'd been planning to be pretty fucking drunk, but halfway down the bottle he'd realised he was only getting more morose and more pissed off, and faced with the day's lessons on impulse control, he'd turned to coffee, instead. Once he'd sobered up enough, that had turned into coffee and boat maintenance; something he could do with his hands that would distract his brain and clear his thoughts.

That was how Nathan found him, on the deck of the _Cape Rouge_.

"It's late." The gravelly voice floated over, and when he looked up, he saw his oldest friend and enemy standing with his arms hanging still at his sides as they'd not been all day -- no point in extraneous movement or touching if you couldn't feel it -- waiting for Duke's permission before he crossed onto the boat.

"Yeah," Duke acknowledged. It was almost dark. "It _is_ late." He turned the accusation back around. Nathan was still wearing his gun and badge, and there was blood in his hair, a bandage over the wound on his temple. The rest of him had been patched up, but it all had a temporary sort of appearance.

"Just finished working, in fact." They were briefly silent. Duke tackled a wayward screw, and Nathan sat down on a step and watched. Unacknowledged black bruising marked the joints of Nathan's fingers where they curled over the edge of the step. Duke was so used to Nate by now, that only became freakish as he thought how he'd been just as unfazed when he could feel it. "We got them all. Liam's in a cell with no reflective surfaces, but I think he's wound down for now. Perhaps his Trouble provided enough trauma to overshadow whatever triggered it. The kid in the coma woke up a few hours ago. Long term, we may have to think of something else... Matter of time before that kid decides it'd be great fun to do it all over again."

"Hunter meteor shower's in two weeks," Duke said. "Might not have to think of it for long."

Nathan opted not to say anything to that, just tightened up his jaw. 

This time last week, sitting this companionably would have been as likely as them visiting the moon. 

"Dwight." Duke changed the subject quickly. "I need to buy that guy a fruit basket or something. Saved my life. Took the bullet... Is he okay?"

Nathan nodded in a more amenable silence, before offering, "Done it for me, before, too."

"I'm surprised _you_ came _here_." Deeming all his efforts to keep from thinking about the day in vain, Duke gave up on the repairs and stood. He expected Nathan to do the same, but he didn't, which you had to figure was exhaustion or concussion and not the fact he was comfortable enough to stay relaxed on Duke's boat, with Duke looming over him, after everything that had happened earlier. "You know," his words half swallowed by a bitter laugh, "you took what happened between you and... me... _bad-_ me... incredibly well, and that... actually, that worries me. Seriously, are you alright?"

Nathan smiled wryly. He did seem a bit spaced out. "Truth? It felt like... well, it _felt_. Like it didn't happen to me. All that sensation."

Duke grimaced. "Like an out-of-body-experience. I get it."

"I'm fucked up, Duke." The declaration came with a raw, directionless anger behind the swift words. Duke was relieved the anger _wasn't_ aimed at him -- the universe, maybe -- but Nathan's anguish still cut. "Even when the Troubles end -- _if_ they end -- I don't think I'm ever going to be normal. Been too long like this."

"...I'm sorry," Duke said. That had to be one bitter pill to swallow.

Nathan twitched. "Forget it. I'm -- whatever I am, I can handle it." His hand sliced the air, aggressively cutting off the subject and pushing it away. "The rest? It's not the worst thing in the world. You and me, we fooled around before."

Duke choked. "Like hell. When? Where? What did you do with my _memory_ of it?"

Nathan rolled his eyes. "We were kids. Twelve, thirteen, I don't know. Dirty mags -- you stole them from Petey Benson, I remember that -- mutual masturbation, figuring it all out. Not like what happened today got much further."

All right. That, he did remember, sort of, though in later years his teenage ego had mostly blanked out the memory of the actual _touching_ , he discovered, though he knew logically it must have happened. Jesus. He figured it said something about Nate's sexual experience, that he'd _count_ that as a sexual experience. Or maybe it was just about different ways of drawing out the lines, and Nathan's line was drawn around any intimate touch. And, fuck, _what_? What the hell? In the land of Nathan Wuornos-logic, he and Nathan had been sexually intimate? "Okay, how you remember that may not be how I do, but... you're comfortable with that." He laid it out slowly.

Never one to waste words where an infuriating blank could be substituted, Nathan shrugged.

Fucking twelve years old! Duke thought, and had to wonder what parts of his subconscious, how far buried, held the motivations Liam's Trouble had mined. By contrast, Nathan's Evil Twin had most rigidly maintained ' _I can't feel you and therefore have no interest in you_ ', and that was... interesting... in hindsight.

"Audrey," he said aloud as the thought hit. The same thought, in fact, that the dickhead version of him had spouted, but who was to say it wasn't the one good idea that guy had had? Because it hit him like a truck, and he had to then pick up all the scattered pieces of the thought and work up to voicing it again to Nathan, who was looking at him like he'd stopped making sense instead of just started. "Fuck. That guy was right. You ever think about not asking her to choose?" Nathan blanked him on that, so he pitched it again, "What if she _didn't_ have to choose between us?"

Nathan tipped his head on its side and peered at him suspiciously. "You're sure you're the right one?"

"Yeah. Hah. I may not be the most stand-up guy, but I'm not _that_ guy." Duke scrubbed his hands through his hair, frustrated. "I know. _He_ said it. Fuck him." Did he really think Audrey would be ready to hear that after today? "Fuck him!" he shouted to the marina, following it up with a torrent of other abuse, which Nathan watched, semi-amused, semi-baffled. "Damn that bastard. Audrey... has _so_ little time left," he concluded, breathless, leaning closer in to Nathan than he probably should, "and she is _not_ going to choose. She loves _you_. She... maybe she even loves _me_. But... she's not going to hurt either of us by choosing the other before she goes. _We_ could get there, though. The three of us."

"She's not going," Nathan said flatly, and added like a ton of bricks, "I'm with Jordan, Duke." Fucking Jordan, thought Duke. "Jordan needs me. She can't touch anyone else."

As if his double had had the slightest interest in _Jordan_ , once you peeled back the surface. He'd sure looked like he was 'with Jordan' when Duke's evil double had been sucking him off and he hadn't been _shooting that sonuvabitch_. Duke's temper exploded. "How about what _you_ need? Aside from playing out everything you only _wish_ Audrey Parker would do for you with that woman?"

The absence of argument and Nathan's silence stung and silenced him by turn. Nasty. Yeah, Jordan was a big pile of _ouch_.

Nathan pried himself off the step and got himself standing. His face was grey. Whether it was the subject matter or his physical state was anyone's guess. "I'm too tired for this." His anger was so dulled and wretched Duke could even see it was true.

"Shit." He planted his face in his hands, his rage climbing down. Duke didn't need this; didn't need to make things worse for Nathan, either. "Look, it's been a hell of a day, Nathan. _Hell_ being the key word. Audrey. Is she... is she alright?"

Nathan paused, considered, and eventually decreed, "She's fine. Better than either of us, maybe. She's gone home. I told her to." He looked envious. "And I promised... I have to go to the hospital. After the way you left earlier, I figured I'd look in on you on the way." He stopped again. "Audrey was trying to provoke the clone. That's all. You know that, don't you?"

Duke's head couldn't cope with this discussion, and the hospital _wasn't_ particularly 'on the way'. He shook his head and watched as his friend started to turn to leave. Of the two of them, even _without_ the baggage his duplicate had racked up with Nathan, he'd have expected Audrey tonight. But probably Audrey had enough else on her mind. She'd had to pick up after both of them, today. 

Man… he didn't even understand _any_ of what that Trouble brought out. He'd never thought of himself as, as _possessive_ like that. The opposite, _seriously_. It wasn't like he was big on commitment! Hell, he lived on a _boat_. Duke Crocker was the king of temporary!

If Audrey could get over what Nathan's duplicate had done, his own duplicate's actions ought to slide past, too, when he could bring himself to look her in the eye again... Although… he had the feeling the clones hadn't been the _only_ ones being asshats, at certain points today. His eyes returned to Nathan's back. 

"Nathan," he said abruptly. " _Nathan_. Let me drive you. You shouldn't, with--" He gestured to the side of his own head to highlight the other man's injury.

A barked laugh. "If you did, I'd have to arrest you. Think I can't smell that?"

"That was--" _Hours ago_ , but he let that go, too, mostly because he had no doubt the threat was sincere. "Fine, but let me come with you. It's that or still be hammering the decks at 4AM." Audrey, he'd had to run from, but Nathan... there was nothing they didn't know about the worst parts of each other. He supposed that was its own state of comfortable.

"Why the concern?" Nathan chewed up that last word with more than even his usual Eastwood-esque sourness.

"Lets just say I have no plans to see you die again in this lifetime."

"Fine. But it'll be a walk." At Duke's gawping, he pointed to his head and added, as though to a very stupid child, "Concussed, maybe. Left the car at the station."

"You're _kidding_? Jordan couldn't pick you up?" But he was kicking off his slippers and pulling on some decent shoes as he spoke. "Or anyone else take out a car for the freakin' Chief of Police?"

"...Yet, strangely, I'm not feeling much like talking to Jordan right now." He paused and softened the (deliberate, well-aimed) bite by adding, "She'll only go crazy about all this. I'll see her tomorrow, when it's starting to fade. As for the casual abuse of police resources, you do _know_ how over-stretched we've been today?"

"Yeah... Fine. I'll walk you. You're crazy." Duke sighed. Maybe it wasn't a day to criticise Nathan's conscientiousness, after a taste of what he might be like without it. Duke pulled on a jacket with a mind for the growing chill of the air, and opted to make no comment about Nathan being in shirt sleeves. 

Night was marching in. Another day crossed off the calendar, lost from the countdown of Audrey Parker's existence. 

"Maybe," Nathan said, very low, as they stepped off the _Cape Rouge_ and began to pick their way over the marina. "Maybe you could tell Audrey that idea of yours, some other day."

Duke tried hard to control his face. He turned and walked backwards, better to mark Nathan's expression as he pointed out, carefully, "Not too many days left." Nathan moved mechanically, one foot in front of the other, the unfeeling machine, but dark smudges etched the underneaths of his eyes. Silent and stubborn, he made no reply to Duke's statement, or simply assumed that his reply went without saying. There was no particular reaction in him to indicate he'd just agreed to a theoretical threesome that involved Duke Crocker.

"...Right," Duke said, turning again to face forward which, coincidentally, hid his smile. He nodded. Not really along with Nathan, who wasn't even going to face the reality that they might not be able to stop Audrey going, but more like capping his own statement, as if he'd always intended to. He said, "Not many days left. So we _had_ better make them count."

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's the last of it! It's funny, considering it was originally written in the hiatus of season 3, just how much tie-in to the character developments in season 5 this ended up having.


End file.
